The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey should be on your short list of Off-Broadway plays to be seen this summer. It is an absorbing, poignant, and cleverly conceived one-man/multi-character play written and performed by James Lecesne. Not knowing what to expect, as I hadn't seen or read any reviews that accompanied its short run at Dixon Place, I can urge even to those who avoid one-person shows not to miss this heart-breaking story about the need for acceptance, the presence of intolerance, and the challenge to be all you can be.
Lecesne brought the play's title character initially to fruition in his young adult novel, “Absolute Brightness.” Pelkey is acutely felt if never actually present in this impressively dramatized mystery. He’s a fourteen-year-old boy who has gone missing, and a host of his acquaintances and friends are seeking answers and looking for clues. All of this comes to vivid realization through the dramatic artistry of the incredibly talented Lecesne who, as the tough investigative detective with a spot-on New Jersey accent, Chuck DeSantis, narrates the story.
Spectacularly uninhibited and definitely weird, Leonard is one of a kind and certainly noticed in the small conservative Jersey shore town in which he lives. Flitting around the shopping venues in multi-colored, multi-layered flip-flops of his own creation, Leonard is a fashion statement nonpareil and undoubtedly easy to spot. But he is also evidently joyously entertaining and an inspiration to many of the more reserved ladies in town, especially those who frequent the local beauty salon owned by the boy's possible aunt/guardian Ellen Hertle, where his advice on style is taken quite seriously.
What is taken most seriously however, is Leonard's sudden disappearance. After twenty four hours, it is brought to the attention of the detective who immediately begins listening to the various people who know the boy. There is the distinct possibility of foul play. Besides Ellen, there is her sixteen-year-old daughter Phoebe, Ellen's gravel-voiced (from chain smoking) friend, the kindly old proprietor in the clock repair shop, and Buddy Howard, the very English artistic head of the local community theater and dance academy who understand Leonard and offer background and credulity. The evidence of a heinous crime appears when Gloria Salzano, the widow of a mobster sees one of the flip-flops floating on the lake near her home.
All these characters with their various quirks and characteristics add to our understanding and to the mystery. This, as Lecesne's dazzling transitions occur with a quick turnaround of his body or with a twist of his head. It doesn't take but a few minutes to become captive to the witty insightful text and the terrifically individualized characters. One has to assume that director Tony Speciale has kept a “speciale” eye on Lecesne's beautifully timed and detailed performance.
With few exceptions, the action takes place in his office, basically a table with a growing number of props. That the detective solves the case doesn't come as a surprise. It also isn't surprising that we quickly come to care for and pine for the unique young human being who was fearless in the light of his own brightness as he was also apparently able to brighten the lives of those with whom he came in contact. Here is a portrait of a young man with flair to spare and who courageously dared to flaunt it. That Lecesne goes from decidedly macho to decisively feminine in a blink is certainly to his credit, but it is the expert story-telling that ultimately keeps us in the play's thrall.
Another Lecesne solo, Word of Mouth, won both the Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle award for Solo Performance for Word of Mouth for the 1994-95 season. A character from that play was also used in Lecesne's Academy Award-winning 1995 live-action short “Trevor” about an attempted suicide of a gay teen. It's nice to see this wonderful actor-writer back off-Broadway to brings to life a half-dozen characters but mainly one special young man.
