Call Me Elizabeth
Reviewed by F. Kathleen Foley
Sierra Madre Playhouse
Through February 19
RECOMMENDED
It requires temerity to play Elizabeth Taylor, arguably the most luminously beautiful woman to earn the title of Hollywood “star,” in the largest, most grandiose sense of the word.
In her one-woman show, Call Me Elizabeth, an offering in Sierra Madre Playhouse’s 2023 Solo Shows Festival, Kayla Boye, who also wrote the play, proves a charming performer with a serviceable resemblance to Taylor and an ever-so-slightly wispy voice that further serves her subject.
The action is set in 1961, when Taylor is recovering from a near-fatal bout of pneumonia that earned her a “sympathy Oscar” for Butterfield 8 (a film she detested). As the light go up, Elizabeth (don’t call her Liz, a hated nickname from the tabloids) welcomes friend and former fling Max Lerner to her Beverly Hills Hotel bungalow to collaborate on a planned autobiography. Lerner’s unseen presence provides the perfect excuse for Taylor to go on at length about her past — the movies, the lovers, the marriages! Cue the Cinemascope!
As the champagne flows, washing down the Seconals that Taylor pops to blunt the pain of a back injury that has plagued her since childhood, the recollections get increasingly intimate and raw. What matter if they seem the very stuff of the tabloids that are the bane of her existence? This is juicy stuff that rivets our attention throughout the show’s brisk 75-minute running time.
And what matter if this largely chronological recapitulation sometimes feels like a CV on steroids? Oh, well, it does matter, quite a bit. But Boye sells her confessional with panache, avoiding lapses into the dreaded vanity genre.
Particularly poignant is the 18-year-old Taylor’s studio-engineered wedding to hotel heir Nicky Hilton, a publicity extravaganza staged largely to promote Father of the Bride. Taylor’s “dream” romance quickly devolves into a nightmare of abuse. A swift kick in the stomach and a resulting miscarriage finally prompts her to call it quits on her marriage — earning her first round of hate mail and death threats from a disappointed public.
From the harrowing to the dishy, Taylor’s increasingly tipsy stories are interrupted by phone calls from the drunken Eddie Fisher, Taylor’s current husband — bells signaling the last round in her latest ill-begotten marriage.
This is not exactly deathless drama that will stick long in the heart or the memory, but as pure entertainment, it packs a wallop. If you enjoy reading People on the sly, this may be your guilty pleasure.
Sierra Madre Playhouse, 87 W. Sierra Madre Blvd., Sierra Madre; Fri.-Sat., 8 pm; Sun., 2 pm; through Feb. 19. (626) 355-4318 or https://sierramadreplayhouse.org. Running time: one hour and 15 minutes with no intermission.
