Ann Richards, the legendary Texas governor with poofy spun-sugar hair, died on September 13, 2006, but thanks to Holland Taylor’s play Ann, she’s still having her moment.

Like Jasmine Crockett, who took this summer’s Democratic National Convention by storm with a speech composed of a string of stinging one-liners, Richards delivered her 1988 DNC keynote address with the perfect timing of a professional standup comedian.

The one-woman play Ann, now on stage at Don Horn’s triangle productions!, begins with archival footage from Richards’ famous address, in which she flaunted her Texas accent like a flag as she paraphrased a Bob Thaves “Frank and Ernest” comic strip, saying that Ginger Rogers could do everything Fred Astaire did, only “backwards and in hiiiigh heels.” The speech brought Richards national attention as a feminist with a wicked sense of humor, and helped pave her way to the governor’s mansion in 1990.

Taylor, an actor known for her roles in the movie Legally Blonde and TV’s Two and a Half Men, met Richards in 2004 and was later inspired to pay tribute to the feisty politician by writing Ann, which opened on Broadway in 2013, with Taylor as its star.

Although the entertaining play captures Richards’ firecracker character, it’s also a blatant message about the importance of voting and other political activism. No wonder, then, that Horn, who directed the show in 2018, decided this election year was a good time to bring Ann back, with local icon Margie Boulé reprising her role as Richards.

I’d never seen the play before, but I wasn’t surprised that Boulé commanded the stage on opening night. Then again, I wouldn’t be surprised if the multitalented performer, who has also enjoyed a decades-long career as a journalist, could stand on her head and spin plates on her toes while singing The Star Spangled Banner. Despite the day’s 102-degree heat, Boulé, in her indomitable way, delivered an engaging performance for the entire two-hour show.

The script, which is divided into three sections, begins with an exposition-heavy college commencement address, where Ann talks about how she learned as a child to josh with the good old boys her father knew before developing an awareness of repressed people of all colors.

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Here, she’s the lively Ann of the keynote address, laughing at her own jokes and interacting with the audience by asking if we wanted to hear an off-color joke. The answer, of course, was a rousing “Yes!” and contributed to the vibe that this was not a formal speech, but more like a coffee date with a particularly witty friend who segues from topic to topic. “My daddy was born just up the road,” Ann says, then later shares that George Washington was originally from Texas, but the family moved to Virginia because “if you can’t tell a lie, you can’t live in Texas.”

Woven into these funny, folksy bits are more serious stories, as when Ann talks about her alcoholism. Saying that she was a housewife and a mother of four children, she adds, “About the drinking: I was fun.” Apparently so, because she once went to a costume party dressed like a tampon, but a deeply humbled Ann also says her own children told her at an intervention how she acted when she was drunk.

Seamlessly transitioning to the show’s second section, Ann leaves the commencement lectern and walks a few steps across the stage to the governor’s office. Designed by Horn, the set features a heavy wooden desk. Here, Ann takes off her heels and gets right to work, bellowing at her offstage secretary (voiced by Kelsey Bentz) and various other people who can’t keep up with her rapid-fire work ethic.

In 1994, her last year as governor, Richards told Paul Burka of Texas Monthly, “I’m wiser because government is much harder to change than I thought. I’m sadder because politics is a lot meaner than I thought.”

We see that sadder and wiser Ann here, as she barely gives the audience a glance. Instead, her eyes are focused on her desk and the stack of papers she signs as she talks on the phone with everyone from her lawyer and her press secretary to her grown children and her pal Bill Clinton, who cheers her up as she fumes over countless problems, including whether or not to sign a stay of execution for an abused man who committed a shocking crime.

Boulé, who recently told KLCC’s “Oregon Grapevine” she was a victim of sexual harassment in the 1970s, understands the grit Richards needed to succeed in a male-dominated field. As Ann, Boulé paces around the office with so much restless intensity, I assumed that Richards had died of a heart attack before I learned that cancer took her life. As her frustration builds throughout the scene, Ann drinks from a mug of coffee, puts her feet up on the desk, and even sews some gold fringe back on a flag as she takes yet another call.

Whether it was improv or in the script, there was some redundancy here, especially when the embattled Ann repeatedly said, “Oh man!”  On the other hand, I never got tired of looking at the costume Horn created for her—a Chanel-style suit with a crisp white jacket, big pointed black collar, and a double row of gold buttons that were as bright as Boulé’s red lipstick. And the signature hairdo—a white wig designed by Jane Holmes—is a shimmering joy to behold.

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In the end, Richards is back giving her commencement address, possibly in the present day, because she also describes her own funeral, which took place in 2006. Although George W. Bush trounced her in her bid for a second term as governor, the ultimately undaunted Ann asserts that the bell of progress couldn’t be unrung. Considering the overturn of Roe v. Wade in 2022, I’m not so sure about that statement. On the other hand, Richards’ work was a precursor to the celebration of women at the recent DNC.

Part of the appeal of triangle productions! is its sincerity. If the optimism in Ann feels unwarranted, it can be forgiven, because it also entertains while persistently encouraging us all to work for equality and to remember that “bad things happen when good people don’t vote.” Considering the close presidential elections of the last eight years, it’s a message that bears repeating.

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Ann is onstage through September 29 at triangle productions!, 1785 N.E. Sandy Blvd, Portland. Tickets: 503-239-5919 or online at trianglepro.org.