Marilu Henner’s mother was full of sayings, but one of the maxims Marilu, or “Mari” as her mother would have called her, heard the most was “If you’re bored, you’re boring.”
The message must have hit home because I have spoken to Marilu Henner four times, each a joy, and I have never found her to be even momentarily boring or without a mission, or seven, in progress.
Few have led fuller or more interesting lives than Henner who has a myriad of interests, is in constant demand as an entertainer, and who practices nutritional, dietary, and physical discipline like a crusader working to save everyone’s youth and health as dutifully as she preserves her own.
Marilu’s life is an open script, as she relates it during an inventive, lively, and thorough review of it in “The Marilu Henner Show,” playing at New Hope’s Bucks County Playhouse through August 15.
Henner’s memory is legend, so she doesn’t leave out much, if anything, from the time she took dancing lessons in her mother’s backyard school, calling “me,” “me,” every time anyone from a theater called looking for children to cast to the time “Let’s Misbehave,” her bravura opening number in New Hope begins.
Henner said the challenge was finding the right theatrical way to tell parts of her story that don’t involve a number from a show, movie, or TV program…
