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NY TIMES REVIEW EXCERPTS:One Woman, Uh-Huh, but So Many Guises By CHARLES ISHERWOOD:At 49, Ms. Goldberg is now an established, successful performer, and this time the oversight (of a lack of a director) looks more like folly. She remains a spirited, engaging presence, but this is a show in desperate need of a stringent theatrical intelligence. Mike Nichols, who famously discovered Ms. Goldberg and "supervised" the original Broadway production, is among the producers of this newfangled "Whoopi" and has apparently offered some input. (The surname that once shared the Lyceum marquee is no longer necessary.) But there's little evidence that he - or anyone else, for that matter - has helped Ms. Goldberg shape this intermittently funny but sluggish evening of comic portraiture. Ms. Goldberg has, in the two decades since the original show appeared, become justly popular for her own naturally wry and earthy persona. This familiarly lovable Whoopi, who keeps poking through the texture of her fictional personae, is good company, to be sure. "Whoopi" will surely delight Ms. Goldberg's most ardent fans, and it may also charm audiences who did not see its far sharper first incarnation. But as anyone who has observed her eclectic career knows, Ms. Goldberg is perhaps not always the best judge of material - hers or anyone else's. How else to explain the bewildering speed with which she rappelled from Oscar winner to Hollywood Square? "Whoopi" offers further evidence that innately incandescent though she may be, Ms. Goldberg's gifts shine brightest when they are smartly - and strictly - harnessed.-------------------------------------- TONY AWARDS HAVEN OPINION: No awards here. As Broadwayworld.com stated, critics claim this is "Mediocre Whoopi"!
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