Carol Burnett Play Opens in Chicago

By Stephen M. Silverman

Thursday May 09, 2002 11:39 AM EDT

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"Hollywood Arms," a play by Carol Burnett and her late daughter, Carrie Hamilton, which recently opened at Chicago's Goodman Theater, has been met with mixed reviews. The work is based on Burnett's 1986 bittersweet autobiography, "One More Time," about the future star's 1940s childhood in the low-rent area of Hollywood, where she was raised by her grandmother (her mother was an alcoholic). The Chicago Tribune called the play an uneasy combination of "Burnett's family story and a fictionalized imagining thereof. Whatever's true or partly true or wholly untrue about it doesn't matter. What matters, and what hurts, is its tonal uncertainty. This is a disappointing, wobbly piece, never resolving the issue of how rosy or harsh to make its story." The New York Times had a similar reaction, also calling the show "highly polished if not terribly subtle." One aspect of the show highly praised by both the Tribune and The Times was its acting, especially by the play's star, Linda Lavin, 64, as the character based on Burnett's grandmother. The Times calls her "sensational," while the Trib calls her "a stage tigress. In everything from 'Collected Stories' in Los Angeles to 'The Tale of the Allergist's Wife' in New York, the woman best known to millions for slinging hash on, and as, TV's 'Alice' has brought her unerring theatrical technique to comedy, drama and various admixtures of the two." Burnett, 68, reportedly completed the play after her daughter, 38, died of cancer-related pneumonia last Jan. 20. "Carol is a very strong lady," Burnett's pal and comedic sidekick Tim Conway, 68, told PEOPLE soon after Hamilton passed away. "She has had a life in which it was necessary to be strong, and she has developed a pretty strong outlook."

Read PEOPLE's Jan. 24 cover story about Burnett's heartbreak at her daughter's death.