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Chicago Tribune
17-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Review: An intimate, optimistic ‘Sweet Charity' from Blank Theatre Co.
When it comes to optimism, Charity Hope Valentine bests ever other character in a Broadway musical. Whatever life throws at the dance hall hostess from the 1996 musical 'Sweet Charity' by Cy Coleman, Neil Simon and Dorothy Fields, the titular heroine dusts (or dries) herself off and carries on. Her travails range from financial impecunity to employment instability and from getting stuck in an elevator to dealing with a crummy boyfriend. Each and every time, she abides. That idea of Gotham survivorship was the main point of the musical (which was adapted from a Federico Fellini movie that had been much heavier on the tragic pathos). But the main point of attending 'Sweet Charity,' then and now, is the phenomenal Swingin' Sixties score: 'Big Spender,' 'If My Friends Could See Me Now,' 'Where Am I Going?,' 'The Rhythm of Life' (famously associated with the great Sammy Davis Jr.) and the title number, one of my favorite Coleman songs. Nobody writes 'em like that anymore. And, of course, the book is by the greatest comedic playwright of the middle years of the 20th century, so there's that. This bit of Broadway excellence (a product of its time, of course) is being produced in intimate fashion by the Blank Theatre Company, which has cast the show mostly with youthful actors, all of whom throw themselves at the material with much exuberance. I was quite taken with the show's gutsy star, Teah Kiang Mirabelli, mostly because she so embodies the essential optimism of Charity, which is really what matters most. She's not the traditional kind of performative, triple-threat Charity, Shirley MacLaine, but she's real and vulnerable and Chicago-style and you'll find yourself pulling for both performer and character, which is key to this show. The rest of director Johanna McKenzie Miller's production is a mixed bag. In any romantic comedy, you have to believe that the protagonist will be safe and happy with her potential partner and that means Dustin Rothbart, who plays Oscar, has to be careful not to play the end of the show from the beginning. He leans into the neuroses, which is fine to a point, but in order for the plot to work you also have to see and believe what Charity sees, too. This Oscar comes off as trouble from the start. Elsewhere, this otherwise likable company has some issues getting the scale of the space correct: sometimes, the show is under-vocalized; at others, things feel overplayed for the upstairs space at the Greenhouse. I suspect that will improve as the run continues but it was the show's biggest problem on the night I was there. Easily fixed, too. There's much else to enjoy along with fabo Carnaby Street-esque costumes from Cindy Moon. As choreographed by Lauryn Schmelzer, Madison Jaffe-Richter anchors most of the often droll dancing and there's some terrific singing from Kelcy Taylor, who just needs more confidence. This is a very hard show to pull off in this kind of space and the commitment and good humor of this creative crew is palpable. Chris Jones is a Tribune critic. cjones5@ Review: 'Sweet Charity' (2.5 stars) When: Through June 8 Where: Greenhouse Theater Center, 2257 N. Lincoln Ave. Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes Tickets: $37 at 773-404-7336 and
Daily Mail
05-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Ruth Buzzi dead at 88: 70s comedienne was best known for TV's Laugh-In with Goldie Hawn
Seventies comedienne Ruth Buzzi has died at the age of 88. She passed away on Monday at her home in Texas while under hospice, it was reported on her official Facebook page. The star was diagnosed with Alzheimer's in 2012 and was disabled from a stroke in 2022. The comedienne was best known for starring in the NBC variety sketch comedy show Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In which aired from 1968 to 1973. The show won her a Golden Globe Award and received five Emmy nominations. Her costar was Goldie Hawn. Ruth also appeared on several popular TV shows such as Days of Our Lives, The Carol Burnett Show, Alvin and the Chipmunks, The Berenstain Bears, The Pink Panther and 1976's Freaky Friday. Her last acting credit was a starring role in the 2021 movie One Month Out. Ruth's close friends were a who's who of the 1970s: Lucille Ball, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Marlo Thomas and Johnny Carson. Buzzi was born in Rhode Island and raised in Stonington, Connecticut. Her first job was with singer Rudy Vallee in a live musical and comedy act when she was only 19-years-old and still a student. She moved to New York City after graduation from college then worked alongside Barbra Streisand, Joan Rivers, Dom DeLuise, Bernadette Peters, and Carol Burnett. Ruth also appeared in numerous television commercials. Her first big TV role was on The Garry Moore Show in 1964 with Dom DeLuise. The star then appeared on The Entertainers (1964–65). In 1966–67, she appeared in Sweet Charity with Bob Fosse's wife Gwen Verdon in the original cast. Next came The Steve Allen Comedy Hour, a variety series starring Steve Allen. And then she landed a part on her biggest show: Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In where she played Flicker Farkle; Busy-Buzzi; Doris Swizzler; and one of the Burbank Airlines Stewardesses. She could also be seen on That Girl as Marlo Thomas' friend Margie Peterson. Buzzi also guest-starred as Chloe, the wife of phone company worker Henry Beesmeyer (Marvin Kaplan) on Alice in 1981. She was also a guest star on Down to Earth in 1985. Dean Martin's producer Greg Garrison hired her for his comedy specials starring Dom DeLuise. And she popped up on Donny & Marie, The Flip Wilson Show, The Dean Martin Music and Comedy Hour, the Dean Martin Roasts, The Carol Burnett Show, Tony Orlando and Dawn, The Monkees, Emergency!, and variety series hosted by Leslie Uggams and by Glen Campbell. She also appeared occasionally on game shows and was a celebrity judge on The Gong Show. And she was on Lucille Ball's last comedy Life with Lucy as Mrs. Wilcox in the episode Lucy Makes a Hit. She appeared eight times on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. And Ruth showed up on Sesame Street in 1993 as shopkeeper, Ruthie. Later, she was seen on Saved by the Bell, The Muppet Show, Passions and Come on Over. She had featured roles in more than 20 films, including Chu Chu and the Philly Flash, Freaky Friday, The North Avenue Irregulars, The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again, The Villain, The Being, Surf II, and The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland. Buzzi lived with her husband, actor Kent Perkins, on a 600-acre cattle and horse ranch near Stephenville, Texas. The TV veteran was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 2012. In July 2022, it was reported that Buzzi had suffered a series of strokes. Buzzi died at her home in her sleep in hospice care in Stephenville, Texas on May 1, 2025 from complications of Alzheimer's disease, at the age of 88.
Boston Globe
02-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
A farewell to the unsung heroine of ‘Laugh-in'
The show was a rapid-fire blend of one-liners, blackouts, vaudeville shtick, What made the show work -- which it often did, though certainly not always -- wasn't the hit-or-miss writing. It was the up-for-pretty-much-anything ensemble. Over the course of six seasons, there were more than 40 regulars. Two became stars: Goldie Hawn and Buzzi, as her perfect-attendance record might suggest, had a special place in the ensemble. She cut a distinctive feature, with a big chin, even bigger grin, and seemingly endless energy. Think of her as the missing comedic link between Imogene Coca and Madeline Kahn, with Kate McKinnon off in the far distance. Advertisement Born in Westerly, R.I., Buzzi was head cheerleader at Stonington (Conn.) High School. She must have wielded a mean set of pom-poms. She headed west to study at the Pasadena Playhouse, where Dustin Hoffman and Gene Hackman were among her classmates. Buzzi did lots of stage and television work. The most notable was the original production of the Broadway musical 'Sweet Charity.' The most important, though, was a school production of 'Auntie Mame,' where Buzzi played the title character's secretary, Agnes Gooch. Gooch became the inspiration for Buzzi's Gladys Ormphby on 'Laugh-In.' Gladys has a place in the sad sack hall of fame. She's slumped in posture and frowning in expression. She wears a formless cardigan and shoes so sensible they seem almost senseless. With hair pulled back in a bun, and that bun covered by a hairnet, she clutches a handbag even drabber than she is. Gladys is a Beckett character, if Beckett's were outfitted by Goodwill. But wait, Gladys has one source of solace: plopping down on a park bench and being alone with her thoughts (such as they are). But wait further, always, always waiting to afflict her is Arte Johnson's Tyrone, a mumbly, mustachio'd old man. Tyrone doesn't see Gladys as Miss Gooch. He sees her as Helen of Troy. Gladys, of course, wants nothing to do with him. So always, always she resorts to the one weapon in her arsenal: that handbag. She wallops the old guy with ferocity and gusto (and pleasure?). This is primo folie à deux, mutual assured destruction of the slapstick sort. Advertisement The gag never got tired. Like Gladys, it wasn't so much ageless as something existent outside of time. After 'Laugh-In' was canceled, Gladys even started popping up on Dean Martin's celebrity roasts. Among those on the receiving end of her handbag were Martin, Frank Sinatra, and Muhammad Ali. Rope-a-dope may have worked with George Foreman. Buzzi won a Golden Globe and two Emmy nominations for her work on 'Laugh-In.' But her hometown bestowed a more fitting honor. Westerly has a park bench dedicated to her. Mark Feeney can be reached at
New York Times
02-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Ruth Buzzi, Purse-Wielding Gladys of ‘Laugh-In,' Is Dead at 88
Ruth Buzzi, whose wary spinster wielding a vicious pocketbook to fend off male advances both real and imagined was among the most memorable characters on 'Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In,' the TV comedy grab bag of a show of the psychedelic era, died on Thursday at her ranch near Fort Worth. She was 88. Her agent, Michael Eisenstadt, said the cause was complications of Alzheimer's disease, which was diagnosed 10 years ago. With an elastic, expressive face and a gift, both vocal and physical, for caricature, Ms. Buzzi had a long performing career. She played myriad roles onstage in summer stock; appeared on Broadway once, with a tripartite credit (as the Good Fairy/Woman With Hat/Receptionist) in the 1966 musical 'Sweet Charity'; performed in TV variety shows; showed up as a guest star in a host of sitcoms; and had minor parts in movies, including 'Freaky Friday,' the 1976 identity-swap comedy, and 'The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again,' a loopy 1979 Disney western. Nothing in Ms. Buzzi's career, however, had the enduring appeal of her determinedly unappealing 'Laugh-In' character Gladys Ormphby, a combination schoolmarm, delicate codgerette and battle-ax clad in a drab brown cardigan, long skirt, saggy stockings and a hairnet with a knot in the middle of her forehead. Gladys's regular appearances on the show — an NBC prime-time fixture from 1968 to 1973 — were generally in skits involving Tyrone, the quintessential dirty old man (Arte Johnson), who would get a little too close, breathe a little too heavily and make a little too suggestive a comment, provoking Gladys to wallop him with her purse. At a time when social mores were growing rapidly less proscriptive, Gladys, who seemed interested in sex and revolted by it in equal measure, was a vivid, and hilarious, representative of the confusion that reigned among an older, more conservative generation surprised by the sexual revolution. Ms. Buzzi took on dozens of roles in dozens of skits on 'Laugh-In' as part of an ensemble that also included Goldie Hawn, Lily Tomlin, Judy Carne, Gary Owens, Jo Ann Worley and Henry Gibson, with the comedy team of Dan Rowan and Dick Martin as the ringmasters. But her Gladys had a life outside the show as well, making guest appearances elsewhere. Early on, much of them involved humor at the expense of Gladys's homeliness, the kind of joking about a woman's appearance that would be little tolerated today. In the early 1970s, Ms. Buzzi was a guest on 'The Dean Martin Show,' and at one point, as Gladys, she enters the set with a complaint she wants to lodge with the star, who is sitting on a stool in his tuxedo. What follows is a skit focused on her flat-chestedness. 'Listen, Dean, I saw that bit you did with the cue card girl before,' Gladys said. 'And I don't see why I can't be a cue card girl. You name one thing that she's got that I haven't got.' To which Mr. Martin replied that he couldn't name one, 'but I can name two.' Ms. Buzzi later appeared on 'Sesame Street' — as the cartoon voice of the character Suzie Kabloozie, as the owner of a secondhand store and occasionally as a child-friendly version of Gladys. She also voiced a cartoon version of Gladys (alongside Arte Johnson as a toned-down Tyrone) on the animated series 'Baggy Pants and the Nitwits.' In a more ribald vein, Ms. Buzzi appeared as Gladys on several televised celebrity roasts, hosted by Mr. Martin, in which, swinging her purse, she pummeled the daylights out of the likes of Frank Sinatra and Muhammad Ali. Ruth Ann Buzzi was born on July 24, 1936, in Westerly, R.I., to Angelo and Rena (Macchi) Buzzi. Her father was a stone carver and monument maker. Ruth grew up in nearby Stonington, Conn., where she was a high school cheerleader. She spent three years as a student at the Pasadena Playhouse in California and made her professional acting debut in 1956, in San Francisco, appearing as a seminary girl in the play 'Jenny Kissed Me,' which starred Rudy Vallee. In addition to her stage and television work, she made dozens of commercials, notably as the voice of Granny Goodwitch in a series of animated spots for Sugar Crisp cereal featuring the character Sugar Bear. Her television work included guest appearances on comedy series — among them 'The Monkees,' 'Here's Lucy' and 'Alice' — and even the occasional drama. She also showed up several times in the late-1960s on the sitcom 'That Girl,' as a friend of the central character, Ann Marie (Marlo Thomas as a pre-Mary Tyler Moore single-in-the-city young woman). Ms. Buzzi retired from show business some years ago and moved with her husband, Kent Perkins, to Texas, where they raised horses and cattle on their ranch. They married in 1978, and he survives her. An earlier marriage ended in divorce. Complete information on survivors was not immediately available. In an interview with The New York Times in 1969, Ms. Buzzi traced the origins of Gladys Ormphby to the character Agnes Gooch, the misfit secretary in the 1956 play 'Auntie Mame.' (The Broadway musical adaptation of it, 'Mame,'' came after Ms. Buzzi made her discovery.). 'About eight years ago,' Ms. Buzzi said, 'I wanted to have some new pictures taken, so I thought it would be sensible to read a bunch of plays and try to find characters I could do. I read 'Auntie Mame' and came across this character named Agnes Gooch. And at one point the stage directions said, 'Agnes schlumps in.' 'I thought that was a great word, and the part was real funny, so I asked myself what would a person look like who schlumped — rotten posture, draggy feet, baggy stockings, speech kind of constipated. So I tried it, and I parted my hair in the middle — the worst thing you can do with a face like mine — and made it really flat with a hairnet. But by mistake, I put the hairnet on sideways, which makes that little knot up there, you know?' She went on: 'Anyway, I had the pictures taken, and about two years later I got to play Agnes Gooch in summer stock. I didn't do her as extreme as I do Gladys now, but the audiences went crazy laughing. So I thought, 'Boy, I've gotta keep this character, change her name and work her into something.''
