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Credits

Genre: Drama; With: Olympia Dukakis
D
By Ken Tucker
Ken Tucker
Ken Tucker
Ken Tucker is critic-at-large for EW

In this new one-act play by Robert Anderson (Tea and Sympathy), Olympia Dukakis (Moonstruck) plays an aging star who hasn't acted in years. Her nephew (Eleanor and Franklin's Edward Herrmann) is about to move her from her New York apartment into a retirement home when Gavin MacLeod (The Love Boat), playing a Broadway director, asks her to be in his new play. All three characters spend a lot of time talking about what a great actress this woman once was, and then she turns down MacLeod's offer. Anderson's dialogue doesn't exactly trip off the tongue (''Fiercely independent people can be rough on the people on whom they are dependent,'' is typical), and Dukakis' character seems merely pathetic, not the tragic figure the playwright intends her to be.

The Last Act Is a Solo is the Arts & Entertainment Network's third production in its ''General Motors Playwrights Theater'' project. The Last Act Is a Solo is a weak play, morose and sentimental, and the acting is overwrought, which doesn't help the poor material.


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Posted Jun 03, 2008
 

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