My friend Ruth and I left The Whoopi Monologues at
the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater happy. As
we walked across the Lincoln Center plaza we laughed as we talked about the
funniest moments. Unfortunately, they
were all in the fifth of the five monologues.
If it hadn’t been for Kecia Lewis’ hilarious descriptions of menopause
our reactions would have been quite different.
We agreed this was because it was the only one that sounded like
Goldberg, who wrote all five, at least as we know her through movies.
This new show is a reimagining of Goldberg’s 1984
self-titled one-woman Off-Broadway production in which she played six
characters. Director Whitney White, who
was nominated for a best director Tony for last season’s Liberation, updated
the monologues and reimagined the show as an ensemble piece for five actresses,
one of whom is Kerry Washington, who is a producer.
New York Times theatre critic Mel Gussow lavished the
original with praise. “Quickly we
realize that Miss Goldberg is not simply a stand-up comedian but a satirist
with a cutting edge and an actress with a wry attitude toward life and public
performance,” he wrote.
I wish I had seen that production because I like Goldberg
and would have appreciated hearing her present her own work live. Director Mike Nichols was so intrigued by the
review he attended a performance and loved it enough to take it to Broadway
where it opened in October 1984. That
production prompted an HBO special the following year titled “Whoopi Goldberg:
Direct from Broadway.” (Interestingly,
Lurleen, the menopausal character, wasn’t in Goldberg’s original show but was
added for a 20th anniversary production on Broadway.)
The monologues in this show are: Fontaine, in which Kara
Young plays a drug-addicted Ph.D.; Blonde Girl, with Kai Heath as a young girl
who wishes she had long blonde hair so she wears her tan jacket (costumes by Qween
Jean) on her head and Jamaican Lady for which Danielle Pinnock overdoes the
accent. I found all irritating. The fourth, Washington’s, is Surfer Girl, in
which she plays a 13-year-old Valley Girl (greatly overdoing the word like) who
gets pregnant from a one-night stand.
She turns to a priest who slams closed the confessional window on her
and, when she won’t leave, sends her to the nearby nuns who also send her
away. Turning to her mother for comfort,
she is put out on the street. This was
the most moving of the monologues and would have been even more so if the
Valley Girt talk had been toned down. I
am always happy to see Washington back onstage.
And then Lewis’ Lurleen, boldly attired in gold, red and
black with heavily braided hair flowing from a top notch (hair and wigs by Nikiya
Mathis). She’s delightfully angry and sassy,
complaining about how unprepared she was for how hot she’d be during menopause. Not from outside but from deep within.
“Ooh, and there ain’t no celebratory feeling to it. It ain’t like erectile dysfunction. Oh, you know what I mean, when you see those
commercials for erectile dysfunction always everybody having a big party. The women are always smiling at the men
because they know there’s a pill that’s gonna keep that man hard for 19 hours.”
But not the women experiencing menopause.
“They look like they about to slit their own throats.”
And they’re not interested in sex. But her husband, thanks to that pill, is
raring to go.
“I say, ‘Look here, wrap that thing back around your neck
and walk away.”
She’s given hormone pills to control the hot flashes but
then is told they cause cancer. “And you
say, ‘Wait a minute, you can keep a man hard for 19 hours but you can’t find a
way to balance out a hot flash?’”
While this was our favorite, audience members -- who were mostly
women in a variety of ages, Black and white -- were engaged throughout, so much
so that I wondered if some had been planted or were prescreened as they are for
Every Brilliant Thing. Many had
no sense of the fourth wall separating audience from performers. They engaged with the actors through enthusiastic
comments and the actors reached out to high five those in the first rows.
It’s a high-energy show, 90 minutes with no intermission.
