A decade ago, everyone knew who Ann Landers was, but today, I'm not so sure everyone would know who The Lady with all the Answers was. David Rambo's 2005 one-woman show, which premiered at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego, is now at the Pasadena Playhouse.
At two hours, the show runs a bit long for a one-person production, particularly when there is no dramatic action and the play doesn't span a long time period. Gary Wissmann's set gives us a well-appointed apartment, beautifully furnished and stylish but not flashy. As dressed by Holly Poe Durbin, Mimi Kennedy's Ann Landers, known in real life as Esther "Eppie" Pauline Friedman Lederer, is well-turned out — not a trendsetter, not sexy, but someone whom anyone would feel comfortable with.
It's June 1975, in the study of a fourteen-room high-rise apartment on Lake Shore Drive in Chicago. This lady has to write a column, one that must be typed out on a real typewriter and not a word processor. She must meet a certain number of column inches and she must count the words instead of expecting her software to do it for her.
During the night, she gets a call from her identical twin sister and rival Pauline Esther Friedman Phillips, the woman who wrote Dear Abby from 1956-1995 )now written by her daughter Jeanne Phillips), as well as one from her daughter, Margo Howard, who would eventually write the advice columns Dear Prudence (1998-2006) and Dear Margo (2006 to the present).
Rambo's script, written with the cooperation of Howard, is warm and funny. It finds "Ann" pondering how to make an announcement that would seem to contradict a column she had written several years earlier. She had ventured to make a glowing commentary on her marriage, but now must reveal to her readers that her husband was divorcing her to be with a younger woman — one younger than their only child, in fact. Rambo's script doesn't dig particularly deep. We don't feel the lady's despair, grief, or remorse. Kennedy's Ann Landers doesn't get angry or display inner angst.
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