Valerie Harper to Play Broadway’s Lyceum in Looped Beginning February 19

Four-time Emmy Award winner Valerie Harper will return to Broadway starring as Tallulah Bankhead in Matthew Lombardo’s Looped, to begin previews on February 19 at the Lyceum Theatre in anticipation of an official March 14 opening. Rob Ruggiero will direct the production. Additional casting will be announced at a later date.

Looped takes place in a sound studio in 1965 to which the actress has been summoned to re-record (or “loop”) one line of dialogue for what would be her last film — the Die, Die My Darling . Bankhead arrives for the session inebriated and given this, as well as her inability to loop the line perfectly, a showdown between an uptight and conservative sound editor, Danny Miller, and the outrageous legend ensues.

The creative team includes Adrian W. Jones (scenic design), William Ivey Long (costume design), Charles LaPointe (wig design), Ken Billington (lighting design), and Michael Hooker and Peter Fitzgerald (sound designer).

Harper was last seen on Broadway in The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife. Her other Broadway credits include Story Theatre, Something Different, Subways Are For Sleeping, Wildcast, Take Me Along, and Li’l Abner. Off-Broadway she has been seen in Death-Defying Acts and all Under Heaven, a one-woman play which she co-wrote based on the life and work of Nobel Prize-winning author Pearl S. Buck. Harper is perhaps best known for playing Rhoda Morgenstern on The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Rhoda, which earned four Emmys, a Golden Globe, Harvard’s Hasty Pudding Woman of the Year and the Hollywood Women’s Press Club Golden Apple Award.

This production of Looped will follow the Lyceum’s current tenant, In the Next Room, or the vibrator play, which will end its limited engagement on January 10.

For further information, visit www.loopedtheplay.com.