David Cale, a solo-show specialist (A Likely Story, Lillian, etc), returns with a new performance piece, Palomino, whose subtitle could almost be "Confessions of A Male Hooker." Having once been cast in a film as the driver of a Central Park horse-drawn carriage, Cale researched the role by accompanying one of the cabbies on his nightly rounds. Now he has taken what he learned from that experience and turned it into a play which is, by turns, bawdy, sexy, poetic and poignant.
The hero of Palomino is Kieren McGrath, a young Irish-born cabbie with a literary bent -- and an irrestible appeal to women. Solicited by an elegantly-dressed madam with a client list of rich, widowed, horny East Side matrons, Kieren begins to make big money servicing these women -- as much as two or three thousand dollars a night.
Kieren isn't a typical hustler trading sex for cash, though. A would-be writer with a sensitive and intelligent side, he is genuinely interested in the lives of his janes and, with one called Vallie, finds himself falling in love with her.
Palomino is woven from a series of scenes and speeches, with Cale transitioning from character to character in swift, seamless fashion. He makes each of them distinct and believable, and manages to play women with nary a trace of camp or caricature (no mean feat). Cale also cleverly finds a way to link his characters and give his story a kind of circular, La Ronde structure. But the best thing about Palomino is the way it treats a very real problem: the sad plight of so many women whose husbands die young and leave them so starved for love, sex and companionship that they have to pay for it. Polygamy, anybody?
