Let Me Down Easy - Ms. Smith's show improves with age

My eyes are still recovering from seeing Anna Deavere Smith's one-woman tour de force, "Let Me Down Easy." Saw it opening night, two months ago, from a seat quite high up at the Roda Stage. Caught today's matinee from the third row, with my ancient mother, at the theater in the round, at the Main Stage of the Berkeley Rep. Profound to see every pore on the actress' face as she morphs from character to character, to hear her breathing as though one were standing intimately close (she's miked), and to analyze the minute details that have changed as the show has evolved.

Seems there are more props today - and that they created a few extra hazards for the barefoot actress on the stage as they accumulated portrait by portrait. But, none of that really mattered as much as the emotional intensity I felt emanating from some of her characters, as though I now knew these people in real life, having met them in June....her macho Lance Armstrong, her wickedly feminist Eve Ensler, her second-gen Jamaican boxer Michael Bentt, her Big Persona Texas Governor Ann Richards, her nebbishly funny movie reviewer Joel Siegel, her elegant Reverend Gomez...and so many more...all these amazing people embodied by Anna Deavere Smith, as directed by Leonard Foglia, each telling their own story of life and the fight to be, of survival, and ultimately, of confronting mortality.

My face was wet, and I had some tissues with me, as though I had expected this. But, the raw power of today's show really had me in a salt-water deluge. Standing ovation.
The show has been extended til September 4, 2011. See it!

Links to resources on ADS: http://www.berkeleyrep.org/season/1011/de_resources.asp

Links to interviews with ADS: http://bigthink.com/annadeaveresmith#!video_idea_id=5420

See my first review posted June 2, 2011: http://characteractress.blogspot.com/search?q=Let+Me+Down+Easy