Before ”Spic-O-Rama” begins, a loudspeaker voice cautions, ”This Latin family is not representative of all Latin families. It is a unique and individual case.”
That lighthearted touch, drawing from a long tradition in American comedy, allows John Leguizamo, author and star of this one-man show, to have it both ways. He is fearless in mimicking and lampooning his Latin upbringing; but he`s gingerly and gentle as well, adding whimsy to his put-downs, a knack he gets partly from the chameleonic tradition of Lily Tomlin and Whoopi Goldberg, of which he`s assuredly a member.
Leguizamo is a rising monologuist and movie actor whose previous one-man effort racked up impressive awards off-Broadway. In this nearly two-hour intermissionless show, now at the Goodman Studio Theatre, he impersonates, with impressive credulity, six disparate characters: a nerdy, buck-toothed preteen; a macho street goon just back from the gulf war; a platinum-dyed, would-be actor who claims he`s the illegitimate son of Laurence Olivier; a tacky, sexually itchy, early middle-aged laundromat pseudo-goddess with a towering hairdo; a young man in a wheelchair; and a pot-bellied father mouthing drunken inanities.
Leguizamo imaginatively ties these six together into one dysfunctional nuclear family. Not that ”Spic-O-Rama,” a work-in-progress, is the intricately developed, self-reverberating and full-blown play it seeks to be. Yet, already, there`s an impressive continuity in subject matter and visual style, along with some very funny insights into Latino think, according to Leguizamo. His self-put-down, of a young man determined to be the new Olivier, is priceless (”I`m not white or black, but the color of urine”). His tawdry, kittenish mother, Gladys, is a mesmerizing ethnic drag turn.
Altogether, his is a detailed picture of a zany Latin household, one educationally impoverished, but stinging with streetwise moxie. Willie, the war stud, terms a girl named Epiphany ”Miss Subway, 1991,” and says of his desert battles, ”I fought people who looked just like us, but with towels on their heads.”
Gladys, Leguizamo`s most indelible portrait, wishes she had followed her mother`s advice when husband Felix was courting her and ”thought of him on the toilet”-a sure way to kill a romance. Xavier, the couple`s disabled son, heaps much of his own bitterness on his father, only to tell a tale of how Felix once nobly came to his rescue when some children were mocking his deformity.
It`s this three-dimensional picture of Felix that gets Leguizamo into trouble. He isn`t quite the monster the others describe, just an ordinary drunken bore, and his ramblings at Willie`s wedding make for a climactic let- down.
But even while it has its slow spots, ”Spic-O-Rama” is an impressive marathon showcase for a talented young artist with a biting and amusing slant on the American dream/nightmare.
`SPIC-O-RAMA:
More Top Picks Best Reading Glasses For Computer And Phone
DYSFUNCTIONAL COMEDY`
A one-man show starring and written by John Leguizamo. Playing at the Goodman Studio Theatre at 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays through Thursdays, 8 p.m. Fridays, 6 and 9 p.m. Saturdays and 2:30 p.m. Sundays, through Jan. 26. Phone 312-443-3800.