By Harry Haun
18 Nov 2004

From Top: Whoopi Goldberg; Joy Behar; Meredith Vieira; Alex Martin; Sutton Foster; David Garrison and Maureen McGovern; Raul Esparza and Lea DeLaria
photo by Aubrey Reuben

"Let's see some of that wonderful smile," cajoled one of the papparazzi buzzing around Whoopi Goldberg, snapping away, as she arrived at The China Club after the opening of her 20th anniversary one-woman show, Whoopi (nee Whoopi Goldberg), Nov. 17.

The smile widened marginally but still fell short of that blinding flash of white teeth that can knock the props out from under you at close range. What we had here was a pooped Whoop, dutifully and politely playing to the end of the string of her premiere night. She'd given at the office—the Lyceum, where it all began for her two decades before—and she'd given unsparingly, a gallery of a half-dozen endearingly eccentric characters designed to remind you Whoopi Goldberg the actress predated Whoopi Goldberg the comedienne.

When a reporter asked who was her favorite in this dazzling display, she gracefully danced around the question, claiming not to have one. "They're all in my head," she averred. "Anyone one of them could give me an aneurysm if I give the wrong answer."

After fielding a few more questions, she walked heavily up to another landing at The China Club to pay her respects to friends, family and well-wishers who had gathered. Then she took an early limo home, just as other shows in the area were breaking.

It had been a long day for her, beginning with "The View" where she plugged her limited 88-performance run. Two purveyors of "The View," Joy Behar and Meredith Vieira, were among the first-nighters, in fact. (The gaggy Behar, after she ran the papparazzi gamut, turned around, whipped out a sure-shot Instamatic and flashed back at them.)

Mike Nichols, whose billing as producer is four times larger than his co-producers, didn't make it to the party at all, but he was very much in evidence in the audience (with wife Diane Sawyer). No one is credited for "directing" the show, nor was anyone 20 years ago; that production was "supervised" and "presented" by Nichols, and he continued to downplay his input. "Just talking" is the extent of his Goldberg contribution this time around. "She doesn't need anything or anyone," he insisted. "I was [just] her friend."

We should all have a friend who'd reach down into a dinky little black box of a theatre on West 19th and bring us uptown to Broadway and a 20-year star ride. Nichols caught her act at the insistence of an actress he had steered to two Tonys—Judith Ivey—and he then transplanted her in starlight. Happily, Whoopi's Samaritans still work: Ivey just finished her own one-woman show (on Martha Mitchell) at The Public, Dirty Tricks, and Nichols is prepping Eric Idle's loony-binge, Spamalot, for Broadway (but first Chicago on Dec. 21).

The Goldberg menagerie includes a physically handicapped love-object who can turn on a dime into a pregnant, self-proclaimed "surfing chick." Both characters are pretty much as Whoopi played them the first time. Also back is "Fontaine" (a stoned slacker who now teaches ethics in college), but his commentary on the political clime is down-to-the-wire immediate. Also new to the mix is a "Law and Order" TV fanatic who shoots her hubby when he touches the dial, and a Texas matron confronting the mysteries of menopause.

For an encore, Whoopi trots out—with some apology for being dated—the little black girl who wears a white shirt over her head pretending it's her "long, luxurious blonde hair." Only recently, via Naomi Campbell and Queen Latifah and others, have young African-American girls acquired glamorous role models of their own race. Before, said Whoopi, she used the white shirt and so did her daughter. The skit ends with her asking a woman in the audience to come up near the stage so she could touch the woman's beautiful hair.

The woman she selected on opening night turned out—we learned later at the party—to be her daughter, Alex Martin, 39, who was all of ten when she saw her mother on Broadway the first time. "I remember it like it was yesterday," she said. "I understand it better now."

Martin and her children—Mara, 15; Jersey, 8; Mason, 6—ganged up and talked Granny Whoopi back to Broadway. Hal Luftig, with whom Whoopi produced Thoroughly Modern Millie, joined that chorus. "When she called me in August and said `I'm think of doing this'—which, for an actor, means yes!—I was ecstatic. I remember seeing this show 20 years ago. It was a turning point in my life. I'd never seen anything like it before. It's like when you go to that Christmas dinner and there's that aunt who says what everyone is thinking. To me, that's Whoopi. She says what we're thinking, what we're feeling, what we're experiencing, and she puts it out there in an accessible, funny, smart way."

Goldberg the producer and Goldberg the performer are comfortably matched, in Luftig's view. "She's a very savvy lady. She got us the rights to Millie. We had the hardest time with Universal Studios, and Whoopi made one phone call, and boom! Done deal." Continued...

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