Whoopi

Rip Van Winkle, fresh off a 20-year hiatus from stand-up comedy, would have no trouble identifying the owner of the three-blind-mice glasses, the torrent of dreadlocks, and the tart restlessness as Ms. W. Goldberg. He might even recognize the outlines of Goldberg’s most famous creation, Fontaine, as the dope fiend now riffs about Anne Frank (pro), gay marriage (pro), and the war in Iraq (con). But old Rip may have trouble recalling the sensation Goldberg created when she first conjured her gallery of misfits. When not lobbing easy lefty political gibes, the raunch-mouthed, middle-aged comic who meanders through this shapeless production (billed as ”the 20th Anniversary Show”) squanders an awful lot of her characteristically charismatic physical presence on the unrevolutionary cause of obvious, coarse jokes about aging bodies.