Interludes

VIEWPOINTS – Speaking their truths: Nora Burns’ DAVID’S FRIEND and Scott Ehrenpreis’ CLOWNS LIKE ME

• By drediman
• July 29, 2024
• No Comments

This past week or so, I’ve had the chance to catch up with a pair of theatrical memoirs that have settled in for summer Off-Broadway runs. Here are my thoughts.

DAVID’S FRIEND
SoHo Playhouse
Through August 10

First up at SoHo Playhouse was the return engagement of Nora Burns’ David’s Friend (RECOMMENDED), the playwright/performer’s homage to her gay best friend (the titular David), who passed away from complications from AIDS in the early 1990s. But more than just a mere commemoration of David and their friendship, the piece is also a very much a love letter to urban gay culture of the 1970s and 1980s — during which parties were wilder, nights out regularly extended until dawn, and sex hung thickly in the air. Through the gauze of Burns’ memory, audiences are whisked back to these freer and arguably more vital times, largely within the context of drug and alcohol fueled nights in crowded, anything-goes gay clubs. Although the piece is in essence a solo show, Burns is joined onstage by Ricky Roman as the show’s DJ (as well as several miscellaneous characters), who provides the soundtrack so integral in conjuring the era. Burns last performed the show in New York back in 2017, during which the city and society at large were significantly different from what they are now. Older and a tad wiser, Burns returns to the piece, holding tighter than ever to her recollections of those excessive, reckless times, as if sensing their inevitable departure. Nevertheless, the overall tone — thanks to Burns’ animated delivery and breezy storytelling — is decidedly celebratory rather than intent on dwelling on loss.

CLOWNS LIKE ME
Lifeline Productions at DR2 Theatre
Closed

Then this past Sunday over at DR2 Theatre near Union Square, I also had the opportunity to catch Scott Ehrenpreis’ final performance in Clowns Like Me (SOMEWHAT RECOMMENDED). Based on Ehrenpreis’ own experiences of having to navigate a knot of various psychological conditions — among them bipolar disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, social anxiety, autism, and depression. As written by playwright Jason Cannon (who also serves as the show’s director) and performed by Ehrenpreis, the one man show is more touching and impactful as a personal memoir than it is illuminating as a dissection of mental illness. Indeed, specific examples of simple human interactions — his exchange with a fellow law-breaker at the police station after a shoplifting incident was especially moving — registered more potently than generalized depictions of his struggles with his various diagnoses. And although there are merits to Ehrenpreis and Cannon’s deliberate storytelling, much of the show feels telegraphed in its delivery and designed to elicit audience reaction at obvious points in the script — an approach that seems out of touch with current more organic modes of monologuing. Having said all this, I applaud Ehrenpreis for having the courage to step forward and share his story. At the end of the day, Clowns Like Me is a brave act of reclamation one’s life and the trajectory of one’s story.