The Lady With All the Answers

This stylish and surprising one-woman show stars Pittsburgh’s extraordinary Helena Ruoti as Ann Landers. Ann Landers started life as Eppie Lederer, along with her identical twin sister, Popo. In 1955 she became the writer of a newspaper advice column that would eventually bring her 60 million readers. In The Lady With All the Answers we’ll meet Ann in 1975, a chic and sassy 57-year-old who describes herself as a "Jewish Joan of Arc." At this point she is a celebrity, living in a world of Chanel and chocolate, bubble baths and bouffant hair.
Speaking directly to the audience, Ann will tell us about her friends – everyone from Hubert Humphrey to Hugh Hefner – and her twin, who became Dear Abby. But mostly she’ll talk about the questions that led to her most famous columns. A trivial question about the correct way to hang toilet paper brought a landslide of responses. More important, people wrote to Ann because they didn’t have anywhere else to turn. Women’s rights, the sexual revolution, and cancer were all topics she brought to light. Ann was the first to put the word homosexual in print. In The Lady With All the Answers we’ll learn about Ann’s experience with the movie Deep Throat, hear about her trip to Vietnam, and ultimately learn what was the hardest column of her career to write.