Fannie: The Music and Life of Fannie Lou Hamer
Cheryl L. West
TheatreWorks Silicon Valley
Despite having suffered polio as a child, a Mississippi sharecropper worked in the cotton fields twelve-to-eighteen-hour a day starting at the age of six in a state where 77% of the people were Black like she but where the minority whites ran 100% of everything. But then one day in 1962 at the age of forty-four, this woman attended a meeting where she heard for the first time someone declare that she had a right to vote. Despite only having a sixth-grade education, this same farm worker left the fields and set out not only to register herself to vote but then to lead a movement to register hundreds of thousands of other disenfranchised, unempowered Blacks across her state and beyond.
Her incredibly inspiring and uplifting story comes to full life on the Lucy Stern stage of TheatreWorks Silicon Valley in a breath-taking, tour de force, solo performance. With words ringing both spoken and sung in resounding, reverberating tones and vibrations, Greta Oglesby delivers an astounding, long-to-be-remembered performance of Cheryl L. West’sFannie: The Music and Life of Fannie Lou Hamer.
Please continue to Talking’ Broadway for the rest of my must-see review.
Rating: 5 E, MUST-SEE
A Theatre Eddys Best Bet Production
Fannie: The Music and Life of Fannie Lou Hamer continues through April 2, 2023, in performance by TheatreWorks Silicon Valley in Lucie Stern Theatre, 1305 Middlefield Road, Palo Alto, CA 94301. Tickets are available online at https://www.theatreworks.org/ .
Please note: All patrons must wear masks during the performance.
Photo Credit: Kevin Berne
