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The peasant class of African Americans was whom Langston Hughes affectionately called the Lowdown Folks:

I don't care what some chef in a toque says about caramelizing onions; I want to hear the telephone cord cooking lowdown you'd warn your cousin about when she was making dinner.

But she performs all the characters herself, and when she launches into song with her exquisite voice, moving from a range of high bell-like clarity to dusky lowdown in both original material by Irving and tweaked standards, the show is most fully alive.

Unlike in the moments after Reagan and his predecessor, Gerald Ford, were shot, you probably didn’t turn on the nearest TV or flee to the closest newsstand to get the lowdown.

“He gave me the lowdown,” Crawford said.