Finding Dorothy Parker

(L-R) Ann Harada, Julie Halson, Anika Larsen, Jackie Hoffman (Photo: David Lawrence)

By Fern Siegel (Posted Jan. 19, 2026)

Dorothy Parker, who famously said “I hate writing but love having written” filled “The Portable Dorothy Parker” with 613 pages. The Roaring Twenties’ Algonquin Round Table wit produced short stories, poems, scathing reviews and screenplays, always noting a long list of the things she hated — from actors to banal dinner party guests, segregation to apathy. Her epigrams — “Men seldom make passes / At girls who wear glasses” — are legendary.

Parker was nothing if not uber-aware of her life and times — and thanks to a sassy compilation of her slings and arrows by Douglas Carter Beane’s “Finding Dorothy Parker,” we revel in an all-too-short tribute (70 minutes) to her genius. Now at The Laurie Beechman Theater at West Bank Café, audiences get a taste of her singular artistry.

That’s thanks to four terrific performers – Julie Halson, Jackie Hoffman, Anika Larsen and Ann Harada.

Hoffman is particularly notable — her elastic face, which can turn dramatically from joy to disgust in a nanosecond, and her ability to mimic everyone from Parker to Billie Holiday is a standout.  Similarly, Halston embodies the shallow society snob who bemoaned her fate in Parker’s New Yorker send-up “The Diary of a Lady.” Halston’s delivery is pitch perfect, catching the rhythm of her speech, while revealing the writer’s disdain for the rich.

The women, all dressed in black, with bright ribbons on their wrists, capture those moments — from a woman’s interior dialogue at a speakeasy (Larsen) or dancing with an oaf in Parker’s short story “The Waltz”  (Harada) — to her sorrows and suicide attempts.

For fans, the show is a reminder of Parker’s keen observations of society and its ills, as well as her anti-fascist stance. But Beane’s show does more — it underscores why wit and a laser-like awareness of artifice, money and class is needed now more than ever. Running through Jan. 22.