Forget Rhoda Morgenstern, the character who made Valerie Harper a star on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. From the moment Harper staggers onto the stage wearing a mink coat and complaining about the unbearable August heat in Los Angeles, she is Tallulah.

Tallulah Bankhead was star of stage and screen as well known for her whiskey-and-smoke voice and outrageous behavior as for her talent as an actress. By the time Looped takes place, she was in her sixties, always in her cups, and totally unreliable. She has come to a Hollywood recording studio to rerecord, or “loop,” a single line of dialogue for her last movie, Die! Die! My Darling! A reluctant young film editor named Danny Miller (Jay Goede)—more comfortable alone in an editing room than dealing with live actors—is assigned to get Bankhead through the session.

Playwright Matthew Lombardo used audiotapes of an actual recording session with Bankhead as the basis of this terrific play. Whether the lines are his or Bankhead’s, the biting wit is bawdy but hysterical. “So,” Bankhead says to Miller, “men either want to f--- me or be me. Which are you?”

She proceeds to demand a drink, smoke, pop pills, and stall her way through hours of recording time—to the delight of the audience. Goede is Harper’s perfect foil—his posture stiff and his attitude equally unbending as he decries Bankhead’s vanity and vices. In act two, the movie star breaks down his defenses and shows she’s still a consummate professional: She could have looped her line all along.

Harper is divine as Tallulah, an actress who not only chewed the scenery but sniffed it, snorted it, and drank it down to the dregs. Director Rob Ruggiero wisely allows Harper free reign to be the true Tallulah. Jay Goede deserves kudos for holding his own with her.

Arena Stage has had an outstanding season, and this Broadway-bound production is the capper. May Looped live on and on. I’ll drink to that.