519 Reviews as of : 03/06/2010

One-person shows having overwhelmingly proliferated during the last decade have come to encompass a wide variety of styles and narrative forms. Though the performer him or herself is ostensibly the reason for attending such performances, occasionally the works themselves make the visit worthwhile such as Thom Paine (Based on Nothing) or I Am My Own Wife (though not to diminish those particular actors' contributions to these pieces). There are also the great one-person oeuvres of Samuel Beckett.

Then there are the several performers who make it their business to create characters of the short story variety - snippets in and of themselves (think Whoopi Goldberg, Lily Tomlin, and Eric Bogosian) and sometimes revealing a political landscape of a certain moment in time (think Anna Deveare Smith). And of course there are the historical figures' lives distilled into evening length biographical works, the better of these being Hal Holbrook's Mark Twain Tonight, the more boring of which (text, not actress) Julie Harris's Belle of Amherst and Mrs. Lincoln, and even more boring (text and actor) Simon Callow's Charles Dickens.

Which brings me to the worst kind of one-person show, the autobiographical "conceived, written and performed by". At the high end of such works is Billy Crystal's 700 Sundays, at the low end the recent Suzanne Sommers debacle, The Blonde in the Thunderbird. Why these shows are lumped into a disdainful category is simply because of the egomania that drives them across the open stages while eventually tacking on a purpose clearly attempting, but unsuccessfully, to mask the ego's need for satiation (Mr. Crystal's being the promulgation of family values, Ms. Sommers's to sell confidence and self-help items to untalented housewives).

Thus it is I came to Border/Clash, the autobiographical work of Stacyann Chin late of Def Poetry Jam. She starts with her birth and thankfully she is young.

We learn early on that it's tough to be a woman in Jamaica's patriarchal society and tougher still to discover that you're a lesbian to boot. Even worse is having your parents abandon you, leaving your upbringing to a humorless, strict aunt, although luckily finding a lovable grandmother on the side to provide wisdom.

What makes all of this unpalatable (the egocentrism notwithstanding) is the relentless high volume ranting that is Def Poetry Jam. Are there messages in those rants? To be sure, but the operative word is "relentless". One's senses begin to shut down and the message gets tramped on. It's more exciting to attend a revival meeting.

As affable and engaging as Ms. Chin can often be, she's not a chameleon so that a number of her characters are only slight extensions of herself and oft times the viewer might get confused as to who's doing the jammin'. There are other times when Ms. Chin doesn't seem assured with her own material, especially in a long scene about an attempted gang rape in which she is rescued by a gay man. There is a stop-start quality to it and other sections that diminishes their veracity.

It is not until Ms. Chin arrives in New York City and finds her voice at the Nuyorican Poets' Café as well as suddenly becoming a celebrity of sorts on CNN that biting, insightful quips take hold and we are finally treated to some worthwhile (and humanly communicated) observations. The message of all that's come before, which feels tacked on like those shows mentioned above, is fight for a life to live right and look to Grandma for inspiration.

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