Berkeley Rep Blog

• Tour de force
• "Let Me Down Easy," Smith's extraordinary solo about our bodies and our challenged health care system, opened Wednesday as a fortuitous substitute for Rita Moreno's postponed one-woman show. This is Smith at the top of her unique documentary theater form, in writing, performance and timeliness. As she did in her landmark 1990s "riot" plays - "Fires in the Mirror" (about the Crown Heights riots in Brooklyn) and "Twilight: Los Angeles" - Smith picks a topic, conducts numerous interviews and weaves excerpts from a dozen or more into a compelling, multifaceted dramatic exploration.
• The result is pure theatrical gold and something more - a topic of vital interest looked at from so many different angles that it can't help but advance the conversation. Director Leonard Foglia's sleek stagings on Ricardo Hernandez's multi-mirrored set enhance the impact
• Smith segues so smoothly that she's metamorphosed into the next character well before she puts on his or her jacket, sweater, scarf or specs. Almost every segment is a gem, whether it's Armstrong, fire-dancer Streb or sportswriter Sally Jenkins on how and why athletes push their bodies to extremes, or cancer patients Richards and film critic Joel Siegel peppering end-of-life insights with acerbic humor. Doctors and patients discuss long-term and personal aspects of the health-care crisis. Clerics ruminate on the spiritual side.
• They should also be grateful that they're being brought to life by the remarkable Anna Deavere Smith
• In one moving scene, a South African orphanage director recounts a child's death. In another, a hug takes on profound meaning. Dr. Kiersta Kurtz-Burke's searing account of poor patients left stranded in post-Katrina New Orleans is as unforgettable as it is shameful. Smith doesn't push any one viewpoint. She embodies a multiplicity of ideas and experiences so skillfully that we can't help but feel eager to continue the discussion.

SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS / BAY AREA NEWS GROUP:

• Now the trailblazer returns to Berkeley Rep with "Let Me Down Easy," a gritty dissection of life and death and health care in America that melds interviews with more than 300 people on three continents into a mind-blowing 105-minute, one-woman show. While some actors lose their laser-sharp edge after taking TV gigs, Smith ("Nurse Jackie," "The West Wing") remains at the top of her craft. As rigorous about her methodology as ever, she captures her subjects verbatim. Her sensitivity to the quirks of speech and the twitches of posture remains dazzling as she shape-shifts from doctors and nurses to cowboys and Buddhist monks. If anything she drills down into the psychology of her characters (and her audience) deeper than before. Certainly the Pulitzer nominee raises the bar for herself in terms of distilling complex ideas, from the politics of class to the relationship between death and culture, into tiny little vignettes that resonate with a universe of nuance. Smith invites us to attend a town hall of one where she channels a chorus of 20 voices that seem to speak for us all. Smartly directed by Leonard Foglia, "Let Me Down Easy" fully surpasses expectations in its regional premiere at the Rep, where it runs through July 10.
• The actress-playwright adroitly wrestles with not just the fragility of life, how we are all dancing with death each day we're alive, but also our deep-seated sense of denial about it. That blind spot keeps us from grasping with the messy reality of things, such as the way class impacts health care.
• So many of the scenes here are heart-tugging, but the portrait of end-of-life care in an orphanage in South Africa where small children regularly succumb to AIDS is powerful enough to beg tears. It's tempting to lose yourself in the catharsis of that time and place, but Smith has other plans, forging ahead toward a curiously restorative ending. Along the way, the quick-change artist goes from one character to another so seamlessly that you scarcely realize she has etched 20 different characters. Some of the people are famous (Lance Armstrong, Ann Richards), but the most unforgettable passages are the everyday folks.
• by the end of the evening the echoes of all their voices ring in our ears. It's that chorus that throws us back relentlessly on ourselves, forcing us not only to consider our own mortality, which is tough enough, but also to carve out some sense of peace about it, which is revelatory.

SF THEATER BLOG:

• We have followed Anna Deavere Smith for years, always in awe of her prodigious talent and ability to not only get into character but tug at the heart. In her new one-woman show "Let Me Down Easy," although the content and central themes are complicated, the heart has not skipped a beat.
• We see famous people like Lance Armstrong, Lauren Hutton and Governor Ann Richards, plus others whose stories are even more compelling, including a tear-inducing representation of Smith's own Aunt Lorraine Coleman, a painfully honest reflection by Doctor Kiersta Kurtz-Burke who was an attending physician at New Orleans's Charity Hospital during Hurricane Katrina, and a fascinating journey into motivation from heavyweight boxer Michael Bentt who spent three days in a coma after being knocked cold.
• If the show has a fault, it is that Smith occasionally brings us so vividly into the lives of her characters, that we want very much to see them again.

THEATER DOGS:

• Anna Deavere Smith: Easy to love
• Anna Deavere Smith returning after a too-long absence from Bay Area stages. More than any of these other solo performers, Smith raises the form to a fine art. She has the instincts and drive of a journalist, the performance style of a skilled thespian and the soul of a poet striving for grace. 
• Let Me Down Easy fascinates, compels and ultimately moves us as Smith gives voice to bodies and minds involved in life-and-death struggles. 
• Let Me Down Easy meanders mindfully through a seemingly unrelated assortment of people as it builds a portrait of a nation at odds with dying and a medical system and government ill equipped to deal with the truly ill (especially if the ailing are poor). Politics certainly plays a big part in many of the monologues, but this is a show more about the heart and mind, which is why it’s ultimately so moving. You leave the theater feeling nourished and provoked. 
• the most powerful words come from ordinary people like the doctor at a charity hospital in New Orleans that was practically ignored after the Hurricane Katrina disaster knocked out its power and water. We also hear from a woman in a South African orphanage where AIDS devastates her young charges, and it’s heartbreaking. When Smith becomes former Texas Governor Ann Richards, the stage practically explodes with energy. Though battling cancer, Richards is (not unlike Smith) a force of nature
• That people represented in the play – like Richards and Siegel – are no longer on the planet only makes their presence and their words and Smith’s evocation of them all the more potent.
• For a work of art that deals so matter-of-factly with death, Let Me Down Easy, with its treasures of grace, is remarkably uplifting.

BERKELEYSIDE:

• Anna Deavere Smith astonishes in ‘Let Me Down Easy’
• bold and interesting
• From her spot-on impersonation of Lance Armstrong, whose body is so kinetic it can’t stay still, to pretending to be the bed-ridden, cancer-stricken film critic Joel Siegel, to her poignant portrayal of Kiersta Kurtz-Burke, an intern who was shocked by the way her superiors at Charity Hospital in New Orleans treated Katrina victims, Smith is mesmerizing in her ability to channel the words and quirks of her characters.
• a heart-wrenching portrait of our  attitudes toward our bodies, their strengths and weaknesses, and our feelings about death.
• Their words and stories are interesting, but the real star is Smith. Her ability to capture the nuances of each of the characters is remarkable. She has Lance Armstrong lifting his left leg numerous times to scratch his thigh. She nails Ann Richards’ Texas accent and irreverent attitude about her cancer, and her appreciation for her medical team. She becomes them, and her transcendence is so captivating that the audience wouldn’t dare to avert their eyes, even for a minute.

STARK INSIDER:

• Anna Deavere Smith’s (The West Wing) eagerly awaited return to the Bay Area stage last night in Berkeley flat out rocked. Let Me Down Easy, a one-woman show based on 320 interviews conducted across three continents, stuns with its riveting exploration of human strength, life and death, and body politic.
• After the two-hour performance, as we made our way through the Roda lobby, and with the raucous standing-O still ringing, I turned to doe-eyed Loni and whispered, “wow!” – chalk me up, I’m a believer…
• Many of these people are well known, but the manner in which they are revealed here on stage — channeled so convincingly through Anna Deavere Smith — makes this a uniquely remarkable theatrical experience.
• The star, of course, is Anna Deavere Smith. Her impressions are spectacularly thorough. Nuances — Lance Armstrong itching his thigh, or Lauren Hutton’s glamorous, laissez-faire body language — are a strong point, as are the many accents. These are not caricatures. Instead we’re seeing these people — some living, some dead — fully realized before our very eyes. By the time we visit with former Texas Governor Ann Richards (“Poor George. He can’t help it. He was born with a silver foot in his mouth.”) I was subsumed: we we’re experiencing a once-in-a-lifetime journey into some of the most fascinating lives on the planet.
• On this evening, Anna Deavere Smith did anything but leave us in the dark. It was as if a giant crack of lightning crushed the Berkeley sky: “THIS is why LIVE theater MATTERS!”

EXAMINER.COM:

• This solo show on Berkeley Rep’s big stage is a masterpiece of stagecraft.
• She masterfully uses the whole stage with technical adjuncts to present a variety of characters ranging from a Harvard minister to a Texas governor.
• Her facial motility, amplified by projections, makes her story poignant and personal.

Photo of Anna Deavere Smith by Mary Ellen Mark.