Playwright: Leslie Jordan
At: Bailiwick Repertory Theater
Phone: (773) 883-1090; $40-$50
Runs through: Aug. 21
You can’t believe everything Leslie Jordan says. And not just because he readily and repeatedly acknowledges the unreliability of his memory after 30 years of ‘getting wasted’ (a disclaimer apparent in his choice of music representing the progress of his picaresque journey to wisdom and maturity). In the American South, from where Jordan hails, delivery has always taken precedence over accuracy, and the actor best-known for playing wincy-mincers on television comedies—most notably, Will & Grace—is, first and foremost, a raconteur with a repertoire tailor-made for baby-boom gays likewise fuzzy of recall.
His story begins at a military base in Tennessee, however, where the father he adores (a characteristic of southern males, straight AND gay) tells him to be grateful for his God-given talent at making people laugh. Following daddy’s advice, Jordan’s ribald tales of growing up queer revel in pop-culture stereotypes replicated with obligatory exaggerated irreverence.
But so what if the events in his agenda often line up a bit TOO neatly? If many of his acquaintances conform to mythic archetypes popularized in regional literature (Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, et al.)? If his attempts at—yawn—contemporary relevance seem tacked on? Jordon hails from a culture where people engage in florid expressions such as ‘ [he] couldn’t catch a fat man running up a hill’ and ‘I stuck out like a rat turd on rye’. (Our hero, during his short-lived career as a jockey, is told that his seat on a race horse ‘looks like a monkey fucking a football’.)
Jordan is also sufficiently agile, physically, to suggest the body language of his various personae—his illustration of dissimilar dance-styles of disco-habitués is especially accurate, as is his brief demonstration of how he butched up real nice for a job in an army-recruiting ad. And in the end, his yarn, however dubious its veracity, makes for a nostalgic celebration of steel-magnolia courage. Who knows? Some of it might even be true.