Reviews by Brandon Judell
Minus One
by Gyavira Lasana
Directed by David Willinger
Theater for the New City
155 First Avenue
New York, NY 10003
212-254-1109
Reviewed by Brandon Judell May 10, 2003
LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka wasn't always a self-promoting blowhard writing bad poetry accusing Israel of blowing up the World Trade Center. He was once a vital force on the America theater scene and an equally respected one in the verse world. In '64 alone, there were his plays the "Dutchman," "The Slave," and "The Toilet." Then in '65, he founded The Black Arts Repertory Theatre in Harlem. In '65, this was a big thing.
And take this stanza from "Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note":
"And now, each night I count the stars.
And each night I get the same number.
And when they will not come to be counted,
I count the holes they leave."
Jones can be great, or was once.
But how did a young black man born in Newark, New Jersey, in the decade of extreme conservatism, racism, and polyester become a member of the Beats and then a revolutionary force?
In his planned three-part, fictionalized account of Jones' life, "The Leo Lepard Trilogy," Gyavira Lasana plans to answer this question, delving into the circumstances that transformed the man into a revolutionary artist.
(Lasana, by the way, previously took on Langston Hughes and his benefactress Charlotte Mason in "Godmother," had poems published in Pivot magazine, and has written about AIDS for Body Positive ("One in fifty black men and one in sixty black women are infected with HIV.") )
The beautifully acted Minus One, which is currently being performed at TNC, introduces us to Lepard/Jones (Shannon Bryant) when he lives in Greenwich Village with his white, Jewish wife Hannah Silver (Angelique Orsini). When not hiding his mixed marriage from his family and his Harlem pals, Lepard is performing his poems at art galleries with his white artistic peers such as Alvah Goldstein/Allen Ginsberg (Christopher King) and Bobby Stones/Jack Kerouac (Robert Fitzsimmons).
But Lepard just isn't at ease with the way things are going. Then two events then really put him over the edge.
First, he witnesses a black man knifed by a crazy white nympho on a subway train. Secondly, he meets another black man pretending to be blind who gets off on killing happy whites after they've given him a coin. Add vicious cops plus nefarious rich folks of both colors to the mix, and Lepard really starts cringing at his own existence. (By the way, these two scenes are riffs on episodes from "Dutchman.")
So can a black man be true to his roots and be surrounded by whites? And what do these friendly whites really want from him? And what about the blacks? And what the hell is best for Leo Lepard?
"Minus One" is a hard-hitting, constantly thorny look at a confused, self-indulgent soul who, for his art, winds up turning his back on his friends, wife, and newborn child. He even winds up breaking a friendly, closet-pederast's invaluable Greek vase. Now that's anger. The play then quits as Lepard leaves for Harlem to become a revolutionary.
But unlike with Matrix II, this ending is satisfying.
Thanks to Willinger's flowing, uniformly inventive direction, an ingenious set enhanced by Carla Cubit's Red Grooms-inspired paintings, and a superior cast, "Minus On" will have you coming back for its sequels. Especially fine are Orsini as the constantly supportive spouse, Robert Hatcher as both the "blind" killing machine and the subway victim, plus the outrageously funny Aja Yamagata as Olive Oyl, the deliciously insane seductress who makes being outlandish the perfect state to strive for. [Judell]
Copyright © Brandon Judell 2003
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