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From prostitute to professor and playwright, from country child to civil rights marcher to feminist, Endesha Ida Mae Holland has lived a life remarkable in itself and symbolic of half a century of astonishing U.S. social change. Her bluesy memoir has been toured by a trio of women, equally deft at folksy caricature and tragedy, who sing like the Liberty Bell.
10. FORTINBRAS (La Jolla Playhouse).
Lee Blessing's splendid musing on the most influential play in the English language and on the tawdry modern phenomenon of the mediagenic politician. From Shakespeare's shaky dramaturgy to the meaning of life and afterlife, from the enigma of TV to the hollowness of the man of action, a thrilling welter of ideas, aphorisms, historical allusions and wry wit, robustly staged by Des McAnuff and cunningly acted by Daniel Jenkins.
THE PHONIEST FLAG WAVER
THE WILL ROGERS FOLLIES.
Take naked male buttocks and female breasts, a rainbow-colored staircase that lights up, a nonplot full of nonsense and nonjokes, an unseen Great Voice played by Gregory Peck, rope tricks and a dog act. What have you got? A soggy echo of The Ed Sullivan Show. Now mention the homeless to customers who paid $60 a ticket and add a row of chorines waving flags in the aftermath of a war. What have you got? A Tony Award. And a pious fraud.