BROADWAY SNAP-SHOT
by Russell Bouthiller
Dateline: 20 December 2004
WHOOPI
Loping across the Lyceum stage like the alpha lioness of comedy she is, Whoopi Goldberg returns to Broadway in a revision of the one-woman show that launched her to stardom two decades ago. Once again, she takes full credit for every word, line and gesture as author, director and performer.
Plenty of water has passed under the Brooklyn Bridge since her last excursion on the Great White Way. That young, black upstart performer of a generation ago has now become one of the anointed radical chic; the type who has palpitations every time the Red States have their say. Twenty years ago Ronald Reagan took it on the chin from the then unknown fringe comic. Today, George W. Bush gets blasted by one of Hollywood's most visible Oscar-winning elite.
WHOOPI: THE 20TH ANNIVERSARY SHOW presents familiar characters from her comic repertoire, such as Fontaine, the politically astute junkie, as well as a new personality, Lurleen, a woman coping with the vicissitudes of middle age. At the performance I saw—one show is never the same as the next—the closing segment involved one of Whoopi's stock players, a disabled woman who reluctantly accepts a date.
Strutting on stage mumbling "Around the world in eighty mother fuckin' days," Whoopi's drug addled Fontaine rips into the present administration's handling of the War on Terror and the current Iraqi military action. Fontaine garners some hearty laughs when he proposes a solution to finding Bin Laden: get child welfare after him. And, when he points out that the world has not heard a thing about that $100 million booty discovered early in the Second Iraqi War, the idea lingers on well after the show is over. It's no surprise this show wasn't around during the Republican National Convention.
Whoopi's second character, Lurleen, touches on things much more down to earth. Carping about the abrupt bodily changes of menopause, her character becomes far more human and far less Whoopi. Carrying on about hot flashes, mood swings and the increase in "air biscuits," the dred-headed celebrity shtick fades and a multi-dimensional personality emerges.
WHOOPI will certainly prove entertaining to those who know and love her work. Those who didn't see the original decades ago can catch a glimpse of her comic roots. Ready to let loose with strong opinions and in a much broader forum than "Hollywood Squares," Whoopi breaks free of the scripted epigram format and lets her philosophy flourish. For her die-hard fans, they'll get a healthy helping of what they came for. As for those Red-staters, it's strictly caveat emptor.