Whoopi Goldberg did it alone not once but twice on Broadway. Her solo show “The Whoopi Monologues” opened in 1984 at the Lyceum Theatre, and she starred again 20 years later in its revival, again at the Lyceum. She played five female characters, and much of the show’s power and charm came from her quick metamorphoses in presenting each of these very different women.
Now there’s an Off Broadway revival of “The Whoopi Monologues,” which opened Monday at Lincoln Center’s Mitzi Newhouse Theater. Kerry Washington leads a cast of five female actors, and sorely missing are all those quick-change transformations.
Director Whitney White gussies up the show by providing flashy interludes between each of the skits that give the five actors the chance to interact against a backdrop of raucous pop music, Cha See’s disco lighting and Studio Bent’s scenic design of five backstage dressing rooms. The doors to those rooms sometimes serve as projection screens for Hana S. Kim’s video designs that project images of the actors. It’s quite a show, but not quite as impressive as watching one talented actor perform all five roles.
“The Whoopi Monologues” begins and ends with its two best skits: Fontaine (Kara Young) is a PhD junkie who visits the Anne Frank Museum in Amsterdam. Lurleen (Kecia Lewis) is a woman going through menopause. I’d like to have seen “The Whoopi Monologues” performed solo by either of these very talented actors.
Young and Lewis have the advantage of being given the show’s most vivid characters. The three others are a Black girl who fantasizes about being blonde (Dominique Fishback), a clueless Jamaican woman who doesn’t realize she’s being flown to the States to prostitute herself (Danielle Pinnock), and a Surfer Girl who embodies every Valley Girl cliche (Kerry Washington).
Goldberg shows her writer’s wit in each of the profiles, but she also overreaches by providing super-big conclusions. The women endure everything from being committed to a mental institution to being willed $20 million dollars. Surfer Girl suffers enough injustices from a priest, a nun and her own mother to fuel not one but two full-length plays. And nothing dates “The Whoopi Monologues” more than Washington’s Valley Girl-speak.
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