Theater review: ‘I’ll Eat You Last: A Chat with Sue Mengers’ at Amphibian Stage

— “Why be a king when you can be a kingmaker?” aks Sue Menger, remembering the moment she realized that if she couldn’t compete with Hollywood goddesses for a career on the screen, she could play with the big boys at their game of choosing who should be on screen.

That’s one of many pearls imparted by the famous Hollywood agent, Tinsel Town’s first woman “superagent,” in John Logan’s one-woman play I’ll Eat You Last: A Chat with Sue Mengers. Bette Midler starred as Mengers in the Broadway premiere in 2013. In the regional premiere at Amphibian Stage Productions, Broadway veteran Karen Murphy savors the agent-via-playwright’s words, which can be profanity-laced caustic or no-regrets introspective.

Director Krista Scott has the not-so-easy task of having Murphy deliver the 70 minutes of dialogue and stage business — pouring herself drinks, lighting and inhaling cigarettes and joints (sometimes simultaneously smoking both), selecting sweets from a candy dish — while never getting up from the sofa in living room of “Chez Sue,” her Beverly home overlooking the Hollywood sign.

When she needs something she can’t reach, she calls on an audience member in a funny bit that will involve shoes and her priceless rug. Michael Skinner’s colorful, detailed set design with photos of her and celebs/clients and international trinkets, along with Brittny Mahan’s costuming (a caftan, of course, with those trademark oversized glasses), say volumes about this character. (Also, props to properties master Vanessa Rohrer.)

It’s 1981, and Mengers dishes on numerous “twinklies” and A-listers, from Brian de Palma to Ali MacGraw and Steve McQueen, as she awaitsguests at one of her dinner parties. There’s nothing better than one of those, she assures.

She’s also expecting a call on her powder blue rotary phone (it is 1981, after all) from one of her biggest and most important clients, Barbra Streisand, who she suspects will be switching agents. It’s part of the biz of show business, and she’s not above craftily poaching clients herself, as we see when she gets a call from Sissy Spacek, fresh off her Oscar win for Coal Miner’s Daughter.

If that all sounds like a somewhat vapid “chat,” Mengers also recounts her personal story of growing up in 1930s Germany and her family escaping to America when she was a kid. She learned English — and fell in love with movie stars — through film. She rose from the ranks as a receptionist at William Morris to finagling star-making turns for a number of actors, including Gene Hackman in The French Connection, Faye Dunaway in Chinatown.

Murphy easily draws the audience in as this magnetic woman who is your one degree of separation from the world’s most famous people. Her stories may or may not be accurate, but they’re deliciously entertaining. There’s a certain amount of impersonation in a show like this, of course, but Murphy (who first played this role in summer 2015 in Hartford, Conn.) is more interested in inhabiting and savoring an unforgettable personality. She conveys a screenplay’s worth of information through a glare, or the way she moves her hands and fingers, whether holding two types of cigarettes at once or mimicking a phone receiver.

What she has to say might not be especially profound, but her story and accomplishments speak for themselves. When it comes with wittily crafted, often hysterical dialogue, that’s all the green light you need.

This story was originally published April 10, 2016 at 12:38 PM with the headline "Theater review: ‘I’ll Eat You Last: A Chat with Sue Mengers’ at Amphibian Stage."