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One thing's for certain about theatrical productions with only one cast member - no squabbling over who grabs the best dressing room. So flush is the Broadway Theatre with these backstage spaces these days that John Leguizamo - starring there in his autobiographical "Sexaholix...a love story" - jokes that he's assigned the rooms to the different characters he portrays: His dotty grandfather, the stripper he cavorts with, his wiseacre psychiatrist and the 20 or so other colorful souls - all backstage as well as onstage.
Meanwhile, a couple of blocks away at the Longacre Theatre, Ellen Burstyn says she uses "different rooms for different purposes" while she's the cast of "Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All," a dramatization of the bestselling novel. Before moving to another room for the decades-aging process of hair and makeup, the actress conducts an interview in the dressing room at the top of the stairs. Her new dog, Zoe, commands a room down the hall.
"I made my Broadway debut in this theater," Burstyn says, nostalgically remembering 1957's "Fair Game." She'd considered taking her old dressing room for good luck, "but it's much too small," she discovered.
Even for Zoe.
Whatever the dressing room allotment, one-person shows are occupying a number of theaters during this busy season.
Two biographical offerings that have moved to Broadway houses after successful Off-Broadway runs are "Golda's Balcony," with Tovah Feldshuh as Israeli prime minister Golda Meir, at the Helen Hayes, and at the Lyceum, "I Am My Own Wife," in which Jefferson Mays introduces audiences to Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, a remarkable German transvestite who survived both the Nazis and the Communists.
Among the Off-Broadway solo offerings is "Nobody Don't Like Yogi," with Ben Gazzara as baseball legend Yogi Berra, at the Lamb's Theater. The show debuted in the summer at Sag Harbor's Bay Street Theatre.
One-person shows are a showcase for their stars, who, for better or worse, have all the lines - except when their audiences occasionally chime in. At one point in "Oldest Living," Burstyn's character, Lucy Marsden, refers to a musical trio as "the Superbs." "The Supremes!" voices call out from the audience, and she chuckles delightedly.
In most stage productions, actors interact with other actors. Here, besides interaction between...