Written and performed by Benjamin Scheuer, The Lion comes to L.A. two years after it won a Drama Desk Award for (an off-Broadway) solo performance in 2015. Long before that Scheuer honed the show in various coffee-house gigs and then during a residency at Goodspeed Musicals in Connecticut. Several of his songs have also been turned into animated music videos. Further honed while on tour by director Sean Daniels, The Lion unfolds smartly and even slickly, with the guitar-plucking Scheuer commanding the stage in expert fashion as he tells and sings his candid and moving story. Mortality is his main theme: his mathematician father, with whom he had a strained relationship, died when he was twelve; and he himself was diagnosed with advanced Hodgkin’s lymphoma when he was 28. Scheuer deals with those dark subjects honestly and bravely, not making himself out to be a hero, yet somehow fighting hard to remain hopeful, find a few good things in the bad. Also at the heart of The Lion is his love affair with a girl called Julia. She comes vibrantly alive in two of his songs; and even though she eventually dumps him, he is once again able to surmount his anger and resentment to pay tribute to her and acknowledge all that she gave him. Scheuer bares his soul in the play, confesses to a host of sins, but thanks to the help of his family (his mother and two brothers gave up their lives in England to care for him while he recovered from cancer) and to his own innate decency, he is able to grow to maturity in the face of death, become a mensch. Scheuer’s warmth and charm—not to speak of his sprightly way with a song—help make this offbeat and unusual show the success it is.
