Hotel Queen in Modest Quarters

In a rehearsal room at a North Hollywood church, a be-wigged actress in an elegantly tailored suit enters a makeshift prison cell and begins to unpack her belongings from Louis Vuitton luggage. “What the hell am I doing here?” she asks.

Running a manicured fingernail across the furniture to check for dust--and finding none--she smiles. “Well, at least they have decent help.” But inspecting the pillow on the bed brings a frown: “What, no mint?”

The actress is Joan Benedict, best-known for an eight-year run as Edith Fairchild on the ABC daytime soap “General Hospital.” And the woman she is portraying is none other than Leona Helmsley, the 72-year-old headline-grabbing “Queen of Mean” New York hotel owner who began serving a four-year sentence for income tax evasion last April 15.

Helmsley is the subject of a new play, “Leona,” which premieres Friday at the Matrix Theatre in West Hollywood for a limited run.

The 85-minute docudrama/political satire is essentially a one-woman performance, with Benedict addressing the audience and the three non-speaking cast members, who portray husband Harry Helmsley and other characters.

The show begins with Helmsley’s first day in prison, flashes back almost 30 years to the start of her career, when she was the newly divorced receptionist for a real estate firm, and then interweaves that first prison day with other pivotal biographical scenes.

Benedict and the husband-wife team of director Michael Lilly and writer Brenda Lilly believe theirs is the only attempt to dramatize Helmsley’s story for the theater. (There was a highly rated 1990 CBS television film on the subject, starring Suzanne Pleshette.)

The play was a year in the making. Last March, Benedict’s friend, actor and commercial acting coach Randy Kirby suggested that Helmsley would be an ideal subject for Benedict to portray.

Benedict then broached the idea to director Lilly, with whom she had worked as a member of the local theater company Actors Alley. Lilly in turn gave Benedict writing samples by five playwrights; it was Benedict who chose Lilly’s wife, Brenda.

“I was a little skeptical at first,” Brenda Lilly recalls. “I didn’t know Leona Helmsley any more than anyone else did. So I said, ‘Let me do some research and see if I can come up with a point of view that’s viable.’ ”

After reading books and newspaper and magazine articles and watching televised interviews, particularly one Helmsley did with Barbara Walters, Lilly found her perspective.

“It was amazing. No one wanted to give her any credit. You’d think she was the Antichrist. But if you read between the lines. . . .

“She had a son, Jay, who died in his 50s, and that’s when it all began to fall apart. He had worked for her, and she drove him. She was always very shrewish in her approach to business, and when he died, it really affected her. I think all her judgment flew out the window; she was in a terrible emotional state. If you mentioned her son’s name, she would burst into tears, and people would accuse her of being manipulative, which I think is cruel.

“So that’s the heart of it: You have a child, and he’s taken away. The point of view I took was, here’s a woman who’s been misrepresented.”

Not that Helmsley comes across as a shrinking violet. Her dialogue is peppered with four-letter words and vivid epithets, which Benedict delivers with relish. She lambastes a hotel staff member for his inferior towels and discourses bawdily on men and business. But the play explores her financial and social ambition and her willingness to compete in a man’s world in the light of someone who grew up poor with an unsympathetic widowed mother who clearly favored an older sister.

And, Benedict points out, after her legal troubles began, Helmsley received hundreds of letters of support from employees. She also supported employees who had AIDS; in recognition of that, Saturday night’s performance of “Leona” is a benefit for Equity Fights AIDS.

Benedict has her own reasons for wanting to give such a woman theatrical life.

“One of the most important things I think I bring to the role,” she says, “is that my husband (actor-director John Myhers) had just passed away last year. We had a wonderful love affair for 30 years. So I associated that with Leona and Harry. I think they have a wonderful love story, too.”

Beyond that, she says, “I happen to be a strong person. I could identify with her strength, her perfectionism. I did feel she got a bum rap in a man’s world. And let’s face it: She’s a dramatic character. What actress wouldn’t want to play her? She’s got everything going for her--strength, charisma, paranoia.”

Those involved hope that theatergoers will see the shades of gray behind Helmsley’s caustic public persona. And Michael Lilly says: “I do think that this is a very evenhanded portrayal. It doesn’t suggest that she shouldn’t have gone to prison. It says, ‘You judge for yourself.’ ”

Adds Brenda Lilly: “I tried to be honest with her personality. She’s not Mother Theresa, and it’s foolish to try to portray her that way. But I gave her a voice.”

The real Leona Helmsley is probably not aware of the play, the Lillys say.

“But I talked to someone who had worked with her on an advertising campaign for her hotels,” Michael Lilly says, “and in his opinion, she’d be pleased about it. She loves publicity.”

“Leona” will open Friday and then plays Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 7 p.m. until May 16, at the Matrix Theatre, 7657 Melrose Ave., West Hollywood. Tickets are $20. Call (213) 466-1767.