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Dear Ann, tell us a little about yourself

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Times Staff Writer

Ann Landers. The name alone triggers a flood of memories about the advice columnist who lent a shoulder to the world, mixing wit with compassion as she counseled readers about life’s myriad confusions, frustrations and heartaches. Her playful responses -- “somebody’s got a geranium in her cranium” -- and willingness to admit mistakes -- “20 lashes with a wet noodle” -- made her a trusted visitor in many a kitchen and office break room.

In its premiere at the Old Globe, a one-woman play about Landers proves to be much like her columns: It’s folksy, funny, straightforward and validating. Outfitted with Landers’ signature bouffant and a playful twinkle in her eye, Randy Graff makes David Rambo’s “The Lady With All the Answers” a smile-inducing, tear-duct-activating reunion with a woman who might have been a stranger but seemed like family.

The setting is Landers’ elegantly appointed apartment on Chicago’s Lake Shore Drive, realistically furnished with bulging mailbags and a waiting electric typewriter but also fancifully decorated, according to Ralph Funicello’s design, with enlargements of Landers’ newspaper columns.

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It’s late June 1975, when Landers would have been 56. Dressed in a hot-pink pantsuit that manages to look extravagant and conservative at the same time (kudos to costumer Robert Blackman), Landers putters about the room, rereading old columns and letting her mind wander back over her life and career. She’s buoyant and bubbly, but every once in a while, sadness washes across her face. Waiting in her typewriter is the nearly blank page on which she will describe a personal dilemma that, when published, will reveal her life to be as vulnerable to everyday whims and foibles as everyone else’s.

She talks to the audience as she dillydallies, pointing to theatergoers who share a likely affinity with the letter writers she’s quoting, or taking spontaneous polls. The Old Globe’s Cassius Carter Centre Stage, with its in-the-round seating, enhances this casual, communal approach.

The lady with all the answers -- born Esther Pauline and called Eppie for short -- wrote under the pen name Ann Landers from 1955 until her death in 2002. Her onstage reincarnation acknowledges, “I’m not an expert on any subject, but I can get to the experts,” and says, “I admit, I’m a square, but I’m no prude.” Graff, a 1990 Tony Award winner for the musical “City of Angels,” is lively and unflappable as she talks through such topics as nudity, health, war and sex, sex and more sex. She warmly fields a phone call from her daughter and, somewhat more guardedly, one from her twin sister and competing advice columnist, Abigail Van Buren.

Rambo, best known for the play “God’s Man in Texas,” drew the material from Landers’ life and letters, with the cooperation of Landers’ daughter, Margo Howard. The result is engaging from beginning to end, but it also feels superficial and unsurprising. That the piece works so well is a testament to Graff’s performance, so embracing and effervescent under Tom Moore’s direction.

And, of course, it’s a testament to Landers herself. Whatever she might encounter in a letter -- be it a disagreement over toilet-paper hanging or a gay teenager’s suicidal confession -- she tried to keep an open mind and empathetic heart. An obstinate editor could really get her goat, however. The play includes a story about what happened when a newspaper planned to withhold a potentially controversial column. The editor received a phone call from Landers, who unapologetically declared: “Listen, this is a human problem. That’s what my column deals with, and you’ve got to deal with it too.” Amen, sister.

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‘The Lady With All the Answers’

Where: The Old Globe, Cassius Carter Centre Stage, Balboa Park, San Diego

When: 7 p.m. Tuesdays and Wednesdays, 8 p.m. Thursdays and Fridays; 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays; 2 and 7 p.m. Sundays

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Ends: Sept. 11

Price: $19 to $55

Contact: (619) 234-5623 or www.oldglobe.org

Running Time: 1 hour, 45 minutes

Randy Graff...Eppie Lederer

By David Rambo. Director Tom Moore. Set Ralph Funicello. Costumes Robert Blackman. Lights Chris Rynne. Sound Paul Peterson. Stage manager David John O’Brien.

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