Writers have long been fascinated with writing stories about the writer’s life. For some reason.
Knowing writers, it’s likely that the day a hominid first put a piece of charcoal to the wall of his cave and scratched out the very first rudimentary letters, he was jotting down ideas for a screenplay about his quirky experiences as a writer.
Of course, if one assumes a writer is actually performing the activity by which he has named himself with any kind of regularity, that life might not be terribly dramatic.
Enter “The Lady With All the Answers,” a play about Eppie Lederer, better known as advice columnist Ann Landers. Portrayed at the Arvada Center by Alex Ryer with a Midwestern, homey charm, Landers welcomes us into her apartment on a night in 1975 as she is attempting to write the most difficult column of her life — perhaps not the most potentially action-packed scenario around which to build a play.
But the column promises to be a doozy: In it she must announce to her readers that, after two decades of advising married couples to stick it out no matter what, her own divorce from her husband of 36 years is imminent.
As a writer, the columnist naturally first procrastinates, nibbling chocolates, taking informal surveys of the audience, playing records and sharing some of her favorite letters as she prepares them for an upcoming book.
Unsurprisingly, it is these letters that make up the bulk of the show, as they are the entire reason for us — or her, for that matter — to be here at all. A few of the other activities and asides in which she indulges seem a little forced, a little too obviously filler to stretch this thing out to a full-length play instead of the one-act to which it could easily have been condensed.
Regardless, this Ann Landers does indeed have all the answers. Given all her perfectly crafted responses to letter-writers, as well as the bon mots she tells us she delivered in person to the famous and powerful people she knew, one wonders if writing this particular column might have been the first time this woman ever encountered self-doubt.
But there is no denying Lederer had verve, as well as a cheerful strain of chutzpah. According to David Rambo’s script, when it came to dealing with those who stood in her way, she wouldn’t so much stare them down as she would wear them down with her relentless ebullience.
For instance, as far back as 1967 she cajoled President Lyndon Johnson into allowing her to visit the troops in Vietnam, and went on to personally place 2,500 phone calls to relatives and loved ones on behalf of soldiers laid up in the hospital. She championed the rights of homosexuals long before it was remotely popular to do so, and she spearheaded a letter-writing campaign to get the National Cancer Act passed.
Of course Landers’ heyday was a time when more people read newspapers and wrote letters on actual paper, so there is a demographic toward which the show undoubtedly is aimed. But regardless of one’s age, the stories are often genuinely moving — not only the ones about her troubled letter-writers but also her personal stories.
Nonetheless, as sweet as some of the anecdotes are, and as charmingly as Ryer wears Landers’ bouffant and pantsuits, there just isn’t much there there. The play isn’t so much a play as it is an excuse to string together some of Landers’ best letters and her pithy responses to them.
And while Ryer does a fine job of spraying the audience with the firehose of Landers’ inexorable enthusiasm, as well as sharing her more heartfelt moments, Rambo’s script gives her very little to work with.
Perhaps, like people who find that life changes based on glib advice from a stranger often don’t last, audiences may ultimately find that the show rings a bit hollow.
“The Lady With All the Answers” **1/2 (out of four stars)
One-woman play. Presented by the Arvada Center in its studio theater. Directed by Bev Newcomb Madden. Written by David Rambo. Starring Alex Ryer. Through May 22. 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. Matinees 1 p.m. Wednesdays; 2 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. 1 hour, 50 minutes. $35-$45. 720-898-7200 or
