Academy Award nom and Emmy Award winner Renée Taylor looks back on a life full of memorable roles in Hollywood and on Broadway, and just as many fad diets in this play directed by Joseph Bologna. A self-described “diet junkie,” Taylor dishes out juicy anecdotes about — and weight loss tips from — Hollywood legends such as Joan Crawford, Marilyn Monroe, Marlon Brando and Cary Grant (she used to think that if she ate like a star, she’d just might live like one). By sharing her highs and lows – on and off the scale – as only she could, Renée Taylor proves how the ability to laugh will get you through it all.

Renée explains, “A few years ago, I had the pleasure to work with my friend Nora Ephron on her wonderful play, Love, Loss, and What I Wore. I told her that, as a woman who had worn every size from 4 to 18 over the years, my version of the play would be called, ‘Love, Loss, and What I Ate.’ Well, this is that play, but I ended up calling it MY LIFE ON A DIET.”

Playing at The Theatre at St. Clement’s
Wednesdays at 2pm
Thursdays at 7pm
Fridays at 7pm
Saturdays at 2pm and 7pm
Sundays at 3pm

My Life on a Diet, starring Renée Taylor (now at the Theatre at St. Clement’s), is also the name of a book by Taylor, published in 1986. The stage version has been around for a while too. Her husband and writing partner Joseph Bologna, who passed away last year, co-wrote it with her, and directed it. The comedic one-hander should really be called My Life on Diets, as the veteran performer never stuck with a single weight-reduction regimen. Throughout the 90-minute, intermission-less show, Taylor describes a dozen or so dietary programs, ranging from the famous/infamous (the Scarsdale and Southampton diets) to the somewhat more obscure (the Lord Byron diet) to the likely apocryphal (the Long Island Hadassah Diet). But while it serves as a running joke, obsessive dieting is also the show’s major dramatic conflict. Taylor’s struggle with her weight is no fiction. She tells about being a schoolgirl who was kicked out of an acting academy at 16 because her weight “sabotaged” a production of Romeo and Juliet in which she was the leading lady. But the show is about much more than Taylor’s attempts to get and stay thin. It covers her childhood (as Renée Wexler) and her early years in show …Read more