Whoopi disabled!
Actress Whoopi Goldberg is reviving the Broadway one-woman show that catapulted her to fame in the 1980s. One of the 5 characters she plays is a disabled woman.
Whoopi, the 20th Anniversary show, has been running since mid November at the Lyceum Theatre, New York, and various blogs and websites have been reviewing it.
nytheatre.com runs this of the show, describing this monologue as:
"... about a disabled woman who surprises herself by discovering love in the non-judgmental eyes of a matter-of-fact young man. This is not only the most emotionally affecting of the evening's monologues, but also the most demanding ..."
An appears on broadway.com, describing the whole show as "anything but fresh". It sees the disabled character as the evening's one saving grace though:
"At last Goldberg shows her talent when she plays a handicapped woman, another character from her original Broadway show. Physically and vocally, she commits to the character. There's a touching moment when the woman dreams of being able to dance like Chita Rivera and briefly loses her disabilities. Goldberg then reverts to reality and resumes her disabled posture and speech. Here, one can see what all the fuss was about when she made her Broadway debut 20 years ago."
Finally, we discovered a New York blogger on evolutionofman.blogspot.com (note: we're not linking to it because of some rather bad language on the site). Will is the author, and he described his evening out like this:
"Finally, there was the cripple. This character at first made everyone very uncomfortable. She contorted her body and her speech in a way that really resembled someone who was quite disabled, but set everyone at ease from the very beginning letting us know that it was ok to laugh. Despite how uncomfortable we were, we all kept laughing. THe cripple met a man - we laughed. Then she went to a disco - we rolled. Then she went to a pool party - we died. And to shed light on her brilliance, Whoopi ended the show as the cripple describing a dream in which she's flying- releasing all her disabilities and becoming a normal human being- Whoopi Goldberg. This, of course led to a rousing applause and standing ovation. Greatness!"
Twenty years on though, is it still OK to spaz it up on stage if you're not disabled? Who is she representing and how? Or maybe that's not the point? Or is the point? And whose review understood it best?
Sadly, Ouch won't pay for me to rush off to Broadway to give a conclusive review ... but if you've been, drop us an email and tell us what you think. Those with lots of money can still see it if they hop on a plane and get to New York before the end of January.
