SHE MAKES IT LOOK EASY

With Let Me Down Easy, Anna Deavere Smith’s powerful, engrossing and resonant solo outing, you may feel inspired to have a meaningful conversation with friends and family, as Ms. Smith has crafted a series of portrayals based on her own interviews that is at once scary, funny and life-affirming. On the surface, Smith’s focus seems to be the state of Health Care, but, ultimately, the play is about the many ways in which we confront pain and death.

Smith has cunningly spliced together twenty interviews, taking on the persona of each interviewee. Â  It is not mimicry or impersonation, but rather a remarkable facsimile of that person’s essence, achieved by employing a slight costume change, a nod of the head, or a soft dialect. Smith captured her subjects’ idiosyncrasies on film, such as gestures and vocal stutters, which she brilliantly incorporates into her interpretation of the interviewees – among them are athletes, ministers, artists, teachers, doctors, and politicians. Each story has an inherent question for us to ponder: Why do we put ourselves through so much pain? Why are we so preoccupied with aging? Why do we wait until disaster strikes to re-examine our lives? Smith does not attempt to answer these queries; instead, her patchwork of voices becomes a quilt of commonality.

Director Leonard Foglia and scenic designer Riccardo Hernandez opened up the stage with the use of smoky-mirror panels and video cameras: as a hospital patient, Smith’s image is reflected in one mirror while a video feed projects her face on another.

For some, health care and death are overwhelming and terrifying subjects – Smith makes the subjects accessible by allowing us to ponder our own mortality with humor and grace.

photos by Joan Marcus

Let Me Down Easy
closed at San Diego REP on May 15, 2010
plays in Berkeley from May 28 –July 10, 2010
for tickets, call 888.4.BRT.TIX or visit Berkeley Rep