Ann Landers guided generations of readers through their personal problems, and now she's the inspiration for a one-woman show.

Helena Ruoti will portray the late advice columnist in "The Lady With All the Answers," which opens Thursday at the Pittsburgh Public Theater. The Public's producing artistic director, Ted Pappas, is directing.

The play was written by David Rambo, a writer with one foot on stage and one on screen. The writer and producer for the TV series "CSI" has authored "God's Man in Texas," "The Spin Cycle" and "The Ice-Breaker" in addition to the Landers play.

Rambo is happy about having a production of "The Lady With All the Answers" staged at the Public. He was here three years ago for a staged reading of "The Ice-Breaker" at the company's Public Exposure series and liked the performance space.

"I said to Ted Pappas, 'I'm writing a play about Ann Landers that should be right here. This is perfect for it.' "

The play begins circa 1975, 20 years after Landers' column was introduced, as she talks about her life and the memorable letters she has received, and ironically wrestles with her own personal problems. Her marriage is unravelling, and she's trying to write a column about it.

"It takes a challenging moment in her life and career, but it is a very funny evening at the same time," Rambo says.

Director Pappas is mining the play's humor and chic quality for this production.

Rambo grew up in Eastern Pennsylvania and recalls reading Landers every morning in the Pottstown Mercury. "When I read her obituary, I was struck by how affected I was by her death. She had been at the breakfast table all my life. It was odd to think of her not being there anymore."

Rambo had been thinking about penning a one-person show and was in search of the right character. "As I looked over biographies and collections of her columns, I realized that her dialogue with her readers through the column was very much an artist-and-audience relationship."

Those qualities made Landers a perfect character for the stage, Rambo says. "She so created herself as a theatrical character."

Landers' sister and chief competitor in the advice business was Abigail Van Buren, better known as Dear Abby. Why did Rambo choose Ann over Abby for the stage? "The things [Landers] was interested in and used her column to deal with had a bit more gravity. Dear Abby was very clever and would go for the quick quip. Ann Landers was much more concerned with broader social issues and was very instrumental in steering a lot of money for advances in medicine and mental health care. She took on important issues that made a difference in everyday people's lives.

"She cut through a lot of mystery about human behavior and human problems. She gave us a vocabulary for them. Thanks to Ann Landers, we knew what to call alcoholism and homosexuality and depression. She brought it out in the open."

Rambo started by reading the Landers biography written by her daughter, Margo Howard, who has followed in her mother's footsteps with her own Dear Margo advice column. "When I got to the part where she wrote about her mother's trip to Vietnam to visit the wounded -- that's what made me want to write the play. That was the turning point."

The next step was to get the rights to use Landers' columns. Without those, he says, "I just wouldn't have her voice." After careful discussion, Howard agreed to release Landers' columns, memoirs and private letters.

Those materials were carefully guarded, and rightfully so, Rambo says. "There had been some depictions of her mother and aunt that were really cartoonish and unflattering and mean.

"The real woman was interesting, And she's a challenge, because she was someone who very rarely let the pain show. That's a challenge for a dramatist and an actor."

Rambo says it has been interesting for him to watch different actresses take on the role. Judith Ivey and Mimi Kennedy have both portrayed Landers in other productions of the show.

"Each really makes it her own. Some of the moments in the play that bring tears in Pasadena bring laughs in Arizona, and vice versa, because of the way each actress puts her spin on it.

"It's so great to see stuff she wrote 25 years ago still relevant, still having an impact, and with younger audiences who never knew who Ann Landers was.

In addition to his work on "CSI," Rambo has also been busy writing adaptations of classic movie screenplays ("Sunset Boulevard," "Casablanca," "All About Eve") for live stage performances. "I've learned so much, just by having to get inside the heads of these wonderful, literate screenwriters from the golden age of Hollywood, and translate what they did for the motion picture frame to a live performance." He's also at work on a new musical, scheduled for production in 2011.