Matthew Lombardo

 
Following the successful off-broadway  run of his first big play, Tea At Five, about actress Katharine Hepburn, you’d think that former soap-opera writer Matthew Lombardo would be riding high. High he was, but in a way he was not proud of. The out playwright, now 45, was at the height of his battle with crystal meth. “The biggest success of my life so far was tainted with this really harrowing awful addiction,” he admits to us over lunch at 44 & X. “It just ruined my career.”
 
But Lombardo was able to kick his addiction with the help of another famous addict, Tallulah Bankhead. “Within each and every one of us there is something kind of self-sabotaging that goes on right when we’re on the brink of something,” he says of the lessons he’s learned from the late actress and comedian. “There is a little voice in the back of our head that says we aren’t smart enough or talented enough and I think Tallulah was plagued by this.”
 
Now three years sober, the outgoing Hell’s Kitchen resident is bringing his Tallulah Bankhead-inspired comedy, Looped (LoopedOnBroadway.com) to Broadway with Valerie Harper starring as the original “celebrity bad girl.” Lombardo says of Bankhead, “She was an alcoholic, a drug addict, admittedly bisexual, unapologetically promiscuous and she didn’t care who knew about it. I think gay men at the time couldn’t do that so they looked up [to] her.”
 
And Lombardo isn’t done bringing powerful, albeit flawed, women to the stage. This summer he begins rehearsals on his newest show, High, starring Kathleen Turner as an alcoholic nun. “Looped has really been a gift. Not only has it been successful but I’m doing all of this sober. All of those bridges I burned are starting to be repaired.”