Arts & Entertainment

Maven With All The Answers

Tipping Pointe Theatre stages one-woman play based
on the life of advice columnist Ann Landers.

Suzanne Chessler

Special to the Jewish News

D

avid Rambo, playwright of the
Ann Landers theater piece soon
to be staged in Northville, believes
his subject would have been pleased to
know of the all-female production.
Rambo defines the late and legendary
advice columnist as a women's rights pio-
neer and depicts her as such in The Lady
With All the Answers, running Jan. 28-Feb.
28 at the Tipping Point Theatre.
"I hope the audience will come to
understand what a great humanist she
was, how fearless she was and how she
helped us understand ourselves',' Rambo
says of the single-character play
"She took on a very public role as a wife
and mother at a time when a lot of women
were encouraged not to do that. She spoke
her mind and was political. When she
(Esther Pauline Friedman Lederer) saw
the opportunity to become Ann Landers,
she grabbed it."
Rambo, a writer-producer for CSI:
Crime Scene Investigation, begins the
piece as Landers is preparing to write the
column that tells readers she is getting a
divorce, an option she long had opposed.
"The play engages the audience right
away:' says Rambo, 54, who canoed in
Michigan while visiting his sister, Susan,
a Central Michigan University student in
the 1970s.
"We take polls by asking audience

members to raise their hands; and in the
second act, Ann Landers talks about hav-
ing taken a poll in which she asked each
reader about marrying the same person if
there was a chance to do it over. Invariably,
I notice husbands reach for their wives'
hands, and it's a lovely moment."
The play, starring Julia
Glander and directed
by Quintessa Gallinet,
touches on Landers'
campaign to get cancer
research funding from
the government and
her opposition to the
Julia Glander
Vietnam War. She told
readers how to contact
their representatives
in Congress, and she
visited troops, taking
notes and following up
by calling some 2,500
family members to relay
personal messages.
"I love that Ann
Landers
is shown as
Quintessa
direct,
funny
and chang-
Gallinet
ing with the times," says
Glander, who has appeared in numerous
regional theaters across the country and
in films recently produced in Detroit. "She
saw her work as a mission and addressed
herself to individuals while being among
the first to touch on many subjects, such
as homosexuality"
As Glander, in her early 50s, is reading

milla I Nate Bloom

Or

Special to the Jewish News

I CI Film Notes

A t In The Tooth Fairy, a fantasy/comedy
W opening Friday, Jan. 22, Dwayne
mom
ma Johnson ("The Rock") plays Derek
MP Thompson, a rough-and-tough minor
league hockey player. When Derek
tells a little girl there is no tooth
fairy, the head of the "Tooth Fairy
Council" (Julie Andrews) sentences
Derek to work a week as a tooth
fairy, complete with wings and tutu.
Billy Crystal has a cameo role, and
the director is Michael Lembeck, the
son of the late comedic actor Harvey
Lembeck (Sgt. Bilko).
Also opening Jan. 22 is

U

36

January 21 • 2010

Extraordinary
Measures, co star-
ring Harrison Ford,
67, as Dr. Robert
Stonehill, an uncon-
ventional biologist.
When John Crowley's
(Brendan Fraser)
Harrison Ford
two children are
diagnosed with a fatal neuromuscular
disease, he and his wife (Keri Russell)
enlist Stonehill's help to develop a
life-saving drug.

-

Winter Sports Roundup
Courtesy of the Jewish Sports
Review, here's this season's Jewish
National Hockey League contingent:
Mike Brown, 24, rightwing, Anaheim

and watching appearance clips to
prepare to portray a woman of 57,
she thinks back to her reading the
Playwright David Rambo
Landers columns while still a teen-
ager. Because of losing a friend in an
person show. It just all came to me, and I
alcohol-related accident, she appreciates
gave it a try"
that Landers wrote emphatically about the
Rambo, now working on a one-person
importance of driving sober.
production about Ronald Reagan to be
staged on Broadway, brought Judaism into
"I love being with another actor on
stage,' Glander says. "As I speak directly to
the script.
the audience, I think of the people as other
"While I don't exactly talk about her
religious beliefs or support for the state of
players:'
Gallinet, of the Purple Rose Theatre,
Israel, audiences get the sense of it by the
relates a family situation to the drama of
time the play has ended:' he says. "She was
proud of her Jewish faith, and a lot of her
Landers' shaken convictions as she faces
the uncertain times of a failed marriage.
Jewish background comes out in the humor.
"This production has an interesting
"The play is very funny, but it also
reminds us who we were in the second half
dynamic:' says Gallinet, 31, publicity and
of the 20th century. Life moves and changes
programs manager, apprentice chief and
resident sound designer at the Purpose Rose so quickly that we really can forget who we
were 25, 30 and 40 years ago. I think the
Theatre Company in Chelsea. "It's a won-
play reminds us of that in the best way, and
derful snapshot of who this woman was:'
it's kind of fun to rediscover." —I
Gallinet, reading two books about
Landers, approaches the script thinking
about how women of her grandmother's
The Lady With All the Answers runs
generation would have known the colum-
Jan.
28-Feb. 28 at the Tipping Point
nist's work.
Theatre,
361 E. Cady, in Northville.
Rambo got the idea for the play after
Show
times
are 8 p.m. Thursdays,
reading about Landers' death and recalling
Fridays
and
Saturdays. Matinees
how he had followed the columns in his
are
at
2
p.m.
Sundays and 3 p.m.
adolescence.
Saturdays.
$23-$27.
A Celebration
"She took on everything, and I thought
of
Women
in
the
Arts,
with refresh-
she was a very theatrical character:'
ments
and
gifts,
follows
the Feb. 7
explains the playwright, whose research
matinee
and
costs
$40-$65.
(248)
led to a friendship with Landers' daughter,
.
347-0003;
tippingpointtheatre.com
Margo Howard. "I'd never written a one-

Ducks; Michael Cammalleri, 27, for-
ward, Montreal Canadiens (last year,
with the Calgary Flames, "Cam"
really came into his own as a star
player and scored 39 goals, the
highest single-season total, ever, by
a Jewish NHL player); Jeff Halpern,
33, center; Tampa Bay Lightning;
Eric Nystrom, 26, defenseman,
Calgary; Mathieu Schneider, 40,
defenseman, Vancouver Canucks.
Halpern, Brown and Schneider
each have two Jewish parents.
Nystrom, who had a bar mitzvah,
and Cammalleri, who was raised sec-
ular, are the sons of Jewish moth-
ers/non-Jewish fathers.
Last fall, the NBA Sacramento
Kings signed Israeli basketball star

Jordan Farmar

Omri Casspi, 21. He's
turned out to be an
exceptional player who
quickly made the start-
ing lineup and is now a
serious contender for
rookie-of-the-year hon-
ors. The other Jewish
NBA player is Jordan
Farmar 23, the back-
up point guard for the
Los Angeles Lakers,
last year's league
champion. Farmar, who
was raised Jewish,
is the son of a white
Jewish mother and a
non-Jewish African-
American father. ❑