A Dream Come True

We just found out (whoops!) that actress Anne Bancroft died in 2005. We are sad, of course, but also pissed since we had been secretly planning to write brilliant roles for her, or make something that would please her in some way, just to get the attention of this near-mythological creature. We'd launch a one-person show, we fantasized, and Bancroft would magically attend and announce that it "touched my heart and my mind so profoundly that I felt it belonged on the New York stage." Is it lucky for us, or unlucky, that this exact scenario unfolded with someone else at its center? Ann Randolph's play Squeezebox was produced in New York by Bancroft and her husband, Mel Brooks, after they saw it in Los Angeles and reacted in a manner usually reserved for fiction. "She's a bit of a genius," Brooks has repeated many times; he often goes on to say that he knows what he's talking about. So we mourn Bancroft, but celebrate the chance to see a play she loved so much. It's based on Randolph's long years working at a homeless shelter, and empathetically portrays many of the characters she met there. All we can say is it better be good.
Saturdays, Sundays, 7 p.m. Starts: May 24. Continues through June 29, 2008