Legendary comedian Rita Rudner returns to the Ridgefield Playhouse stage for the first time in 10 years! Known for her epigrammatic one-liners, Rudner has enjoyed a fifty-plus year career that includes performances all over the world – from the Palladium in London to NYC’s Carnegie Hall. Her first solo HBO special, Rita Rudner’s One Night Stand, was nominated for several awards, as was her eponymous English BBC television show that later appeared in the USA on A&E. Rudner’s two one-hour specials for HBO, Born to Be Mild and Married Without Children, were ratings standouts. In 2008 Rita Rudner: Live From Las Vegas was PBS’s first ever stand-up comedy special. See Rita Rudner at the Ridgefield Playhouse on Wednesday, April 26, 2023 at 7:30pm as part of the Barts Tree Service Comedy Series. Rudner is a house-filling favorite in Las Vegas ever since she opened as one of the hottest tickets in town in June 2000. Over the course of a multi-year run, she sold almost two million tickets, grossed over a hundred million dollars and became the longest-running solo female comedy show in the history of Las Vegas! She was named Las Vegas’s Comedian of The Year nine years in a row and in October 2017, she was given the Casino Entertainment Legend Award. Rita Rudner has written five books; her bestselling non-fiction titles, Naked Beneath My Clothes, Rita Rudner’s Guide to Men and I Still Have It…I Just Can’t Remember Where I Put It, plus the novels Tickled Pink and Turning the Tables. The audio version of Naked Beneath My Clothes received a Grammy nomination. Her memoir, My Life in Dog Years released in October 2022. Don’t miss a night filled with laughs from this comedy icon at the Playhouse this April! Make it a great night out with dinner and a show by visiting Bailey’s Backyard (23 Bailey Ave, Ridgefield) for dinner and receive 10% off your bill when you present your ticket.
Rita Rudner moved to New York at the age of fifteen to become a dancer on Broadway. She appeared in several shows, including the original productions of Follies and Mack and Mabel. It was while in Annie on Broadway that she began exploring the comedy clubs of Manhattan. In the early ‘80s, Rudner took a full-time leap from chorus lines to punch lines and was soon a regular guest on both Late Night with David Letterman and The Tonight Show.
Rita Rudner is a frequent collaborator with her writer/producer husband of thirty years, Martin Bergman. The couple’s first produced film script was Peter’s Friends. The film, starring Emma Thompson, Hugh Laurie, Kenneth Branagh, Imelda Staunton, Stephen Fry, and Rita, won the Evening Standard Peter Sellers Award for Best British Film and was nominated for the Goya Award for Best European Film of 1994. The script was nominated for a WGA Best Screenplay Award and Rita won Best Supporting Actress at the American Comedy Awards. The couple’s second film project, a TV movie called A Weekend In The Country, starred Rita, Jack Lemmon, Dudley Moore, Richard Lewis, Christine Lahti, Betty White and Faith Ford. Bergman and Rudner’s last film, Thanks, premiered at the 2011 Palm Springs International Film Festival, won several awards on the film festival circuit and was bought by and frequently aired on Showtime.
Since 2001, Rudner has performed almost exclusively in Las Vegas selling almost two million tickets and becoming the longest-running solo comedy show in Las Vegas. She moved to a larger theater at The Venetian in January 2011. In 2003, Rudner launched from Las Vegas her first syndicated daily TV show, Ask Rita, which featured a panel of celebrities lightheartedly attempting to solve personal problems submitted by members of the public; it ran for two years. For her work on the show, American Women In Radio and Television awarded Rudner a Gracie Allen Award for Best Program Host. Rita helped write the 2001 and 2003 Oscar shows with Steve Martin and the 2002 Oscar broadcast with Whoopi Goldberg.
In 2018, Rita’s tenth TV special was released – A Tale Of Two Dresses. The special also featured Rita and Martin’s singer/songwriter daughter Molly Bergman. In September 2018, Rita appeared at the Laguna Playhouse in the new musical comedy Two’s A Crowd. She and Martin have previously collaborated at the Playhouse on two plays which they co-wrote – Room 776 and Tickled Pink – as well as Act 3… written by David Ambrose and Claudia Nellens. Two’s A Crowd was staged off-Broadway in New York in 2019. The couple’s latest play – Staged premiered at the Laguna Playhouse in January 2023.
For more information or to purchase touchless print at home ticket ($55) go online at www.ridgefieldplayhouse.org or, you can visit or call the box office (203) 438-5795. The Ridgefield Playhouse is a non-profit performing arts center located at 80 East Ridge, parallel to Main Street, Ridgefield, CT and is committed to keeping the arts alive and available to all.
