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Then, Voyager Wouldn’t Go

Bette Davis Stays and Stays in ‘Me and Jezebel’

Me and Jezebel

• Off Broadway, Play
• Closing Date: October 26, 2013
• Theater Center, The, 1627 Broadway
• 212-307-7171

By ANITA GATES JULY 24, 2013

Me and Jezebel Kelly Moore, left, as Bette Davis and Elizabeth Fuller as herself at the Snapple Theater Center.
Carol Rosegg

The Bette-Davis-in-her-70s look is just right: the too-perfect pageboy, the oversize glasses, the Chanel (or at least Chanel-like) suit. And the voice is good — husky, imperious but lyrical, with the precise, signature caesuras. Kelly Moore (Mr. Kelly Moore, as the program wants to be sure we know) is great fun to watch as Davis in Elizabeth Fuller’s “Me and Jezebel,” adapted from her memoir.

So it’s a shame that Ms. Fuller, who has chosen to play herself and seems like an affable woman with a fine sense of humor, isn’t exactly an actress. “Me and Jezebel,” a real-life version of "The Man Who Came to Dinner,” was probably an amusing, highly readable book.

One day in 1985 Ms. Fuller’s normal Westport, Conn., life with her husband and their 4-year-old son was turned upside down when, during a New York hotel strike, Davis — whom Ms. Fuller (Liz in the play) had recently met through a mutual friend — came to stay in the guest room for “a night or two.” I’ll say only that Act I ends on Day 15.

Mr. Moore’s slow head turn as Davis realizes her hosts have a small child is delicious. So are Davis’s tales of berry picking and running into a Doberman pinscher who understands only German commands. And her snarky comments. Watching her daughter promote her memoir (“ My Mother’s Keeper,” which was the “Mommie Dearest” of the ’80s) on a religious channel, Davis says of the TV host, “God, his hairpiece is worse than Sinatra’s.”

Ms. Fuller’s point of view is admirably self-deprecating. Clearly, Davis is not thrilled with Liz doing a scene from “Of Human Bondage” or with Liz bringing out a Ouija board to contact Old Ma (her dead grandmother, a major fan). And she knows it is faintly ridiculous that after a few weeks Liz begins dressing like an extra in “All About Eve.”

But under Mark S. Graham’s direction, this is the Bette show all the way. When Liz puts on a sympathetic tone and remarks that being a famous actress must have its drawbacks, Davis says that being a nobody has its drawbacks. It sounds snappier with the two-syllable adjective that Davis throws in.