Autobiography as performance art can be dangerous territory. Keeping an audience’s rapt attention while recounting the events of one’s life is not the habitat of the ordinary man or woman. But as we saw Friday night at Skokie’s North Shore Center of Performing Arts, Renée Taylor is far from ordinary.
Resilient, talented and according to the many disclosures in her one woman show, My Life on a Diet; a striver always looking for the next big role. During her 90-minute humor filled spree, she shared insights into a world of glamor that frequently touched on Hollywood’s golden age.
Everybody knows the story. Infected with the show biz bug in the womb. Maneuvering through the audition circuit until you land your first professional role at 15. Scoring bit parts and then bigger parts until you get a star on your dressing room door. By returning to her roots in stand up, it’s Taylor comedic slant that injected the tale with genuine vitality.
Allegedly inspired by the warm and lucrative reception of her friend Nora Ephron’s monologue driven play; Love, Loss and What I Wore, Taylor and her late husband Joseph Bologna created My Life on a Diet to conjure similar magic. Premiering last year to wide critical acclaim, all indications point to their achieving their end.
Using the foil of a Hollywood staple, perpetual dieting, Taylor matched the stages of her life and career to the diet she was on at each significant juncture and milestone. An unrepentant “diet junkie who used to think if she ate like a star, she’d just might look and live like one”, the Academy award nominated and Emmy winning actress and writer can say she succeeded admirably. Her 70-year career include over 20 plays, 4 films and 9 television series and movies. Many of them conceived and co-created in collaboration with Mr. Bologna.
Still a fun blond at 86, and resplendent Friday night in a glittering gold gown, Taylor deftly mixed the poignant and the sweet with the titillating and saucy. An anecdote gently recounting the days leading up to her friend’s Marilyn Monroe’s final days would be offset with a retelling of how she craftily excused herself from an impromptu porn screening at a party in a Beverly Hills mansion.
With the use of movie clips and the wonders of PowerPoint, sitting comfortably ensconced on an elegant chair, Taylor took us on a stroll through a past bubbling over with goal driven living and recounted the many famous people she worked and became friends with along the way. From studying under the tutelage of Lee Strasberg to working with Cary Grant, Barbara Streisand and Joan Crawford, Taylor not only rolled with them all as buddies, she politely took them off their pedestals during the show to reveal how much like the rest of us they are.
With stagecraft imbedded in her core, she graciously acknowledged the warm applause following her very entertaining performance. Was that gesture at the close demure encouragement for the audience to rise in a standing ovation? It hardly matters. A career as full of color and accomplishment as hers deserves exactly that.
Renée Taylor – My Life on a Diet
Through August 4, 2019
North Shore Center of the Performing Arts
9501 Skokie Blvd.
Skokie, IL 60077
847-679-9501
www.northshorecenter.org
