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The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey
Reviewed by Myron Meisel
Kirk Douglas Theatre
Through January 31
RECOMMENDED
If Thom Pain needs must remain isolated and alone, writer-performer James Lecesne conjures up a community in his The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey, a guest production in a brief run at the Kirk Douglas after a successful New York run, winning this year’s United Solo Special Award. Lucesne remains best-known for writing the dramatic short Trevor (directed by Peggy Rajski), which shared the 1994 Academy Award in a tie with Peter Capaldi’s Frank Kafka’s It’s a Wonderful Life, which, more importantly, made possible The Trevor Project, which pioneered services for at-risk gay youth.
This current project traverses themes consistent with Trevor’s, of a flagrantly flamboyant 14-year-old fostered by a relative living at the Jersey Shore. Lecesne, who plays a panoply of parts, narrates the story as Chuck DeSantis, a local detective who investigates Leonard’s sudden disappearance and discovers his battered body in the lake. The tale in itself remains familiar but is told with such swashbuckling panache and unabashed glee at impersonation that the experience achieves some credible pathos both despite and because of its incredible dexterity.
As DeSantis runs down leads, Lecesne also incarnates the witnesses the detective interviews, each of whom delivers a monologue or set piece of his or her own. It’s structured very like an episode of the 1960’s series “Burke’s Law,” which each week featured a host of guest stars in plummy cameos, although the twist here has Lecesne chewing every juicy bit. He deploys timeworn techniques of condensed caricature to establish a type, yet evades cliché by then finding the core of humanity in every flawed one of them.
(Serendipitously, the next night at REDCAT, I watched Lewis Klahr’s most ambitious stop-motion collage feature, Sixty Six, itself frankly deploying cutouts from a “Burke’s Law” tie-in comic book of the period.)
But the whodunit and the thespian display soon defer to the development of the unseen Leonard, who can no longer speak for himself but instead must be spoken for, or about, by those who encountered his extraordinary personality, generous sensitivity to others, and uncompromising determination to be himself (and to know who he was at an age where the very question prompts consternation). There’s a weakness for apotheosizing Leonard as a saintly martyr to the hatred bred of defensive insecurity and the drive to hide oneself within group conformity; even those who most love Leonard implore him to “tone it down” for his own well-being, which he with apparent great joy will not deign to do.
Still, as a fable calculated both to caution us about complacency and enrich us with an appreciation of the glories of uncompromising difference, it makes for a righteous entertainment, expertly concocted and executed. Although it mostly adheres to the norms of tour-de-force display and hews to an unadulterated lack of ambiguity, it disseminates positive values in an emotionally accessible, heartwarming affirmation, despite its appalling — and all too persistent — tragedy.
The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey, Kirk Douglas Theatre, 9820 Washington Blvd., Culver City, Tues.-Sat., 8 p.m. Sat., 2 p.m.; Sun., 1 p.m. & 6:30 p.m.; through January 31. (213) 972-4488, centertheatregroup.org. Running time: One hour, eight minutes.
