Five-minute standing ovation last night for Anna Deavere Smith

"Conceived, written, and performed by"....What juicy words! Anna Deavere Smith's performance of her one-woman-playing-many-men-and-women play, "Let Me Down Easy" is a raging success, as anyone who was at last night's gala witnessed. Directed by Leonard Foglia, this astonishing solo tour de force is based on the simplest idea - an interview with a well-known athlete or writer or hospital administrator or priest or intellectual or mother or aunt - with an unseen interlocutor. Smith, who interviewed at least 300 people to create this script, embodies the characters and their intellect, their passions, their pain, and their inner light, as she moves seamlessly from one to the next on a simple hardwood-floor stage with a modern white couch, a white coffee table, white conference table, and a lovely French chair. A few props here and there, and an occasional delivery of drink or food by a woman who could be assistant, maid, nurse, or hotel worker add context to what is in essence a riveting one-hour and 40-minute monologue of divine intimacy delivered by Ms. Smith, dressed in black slacks and a white shirt.

Anna Deavere Smith, a MacArthur genius grant winner who studied linguistics early in her career, has a strong, unwavering voice able to transmit a variety of dialects, intonations, cadences, and personality quirks. One moment she's a testosterone-laden Lance Armstrong, another moment she's intense feminist Even Ensler, and then, a sad boxer in the ring recalling his Caribbean-accented father, or the wise director of an orphanage for children with AIDS in South Africa, a verbose Schubert expert, and later, a wise-cracking Texas governor, and a serene Buddhist monk. These folks blow their noses, cough, stutter, laugh, chuckle, and repeat themselves - all to brilliant effect. 

Smith's intellect is laser focused as she pulls everyone's stories together with wit, depth, and nuance. Among other themes, she weaves family, health care in America, race, class, religion, and human values around and through what it's all about - this thing called death.

Here's a clip of Anna Deavere Smith on the Berkeley Rep's website:  

http://www.berkeleyrep.org/season/1011/4556.asp
and this on PBS: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/entertainment/jan-june11/deaveresmith_02-07.html

The show opened May 28 and, at this writing, has been extended through July 10.