October 29–November 5, 1998

reviews|theater

The World of Lenny Bruce

New Market Cabaret Theatre, 415 S. Second St., ongoing, 627-9801

Frank Speiser has been Lenny Bruce longer than Lenny Bruce was. Now reprising his one-man show in a "25th anniversary production," Speiser attempts to resurrect the Martyr of Obscenity in a show which is neither funny nor obscene. This is largely a function of the times, since it's no longer shocking to hear someone say "fuck" on stage, just as it's no longer funny to hear long bits about Jews (they killed Christ because he wouldn't become a doctor), fags, dykes or pissing into sinks. For people too young to remember Lenny Bruce, they will wonder what the legend was about while marveling at the dated slang ("solid, Daddy," "I'm gassed, man"). For people old enough to remember, they will wonder what the deal was—surely this couldn't have been what seemed so daring in the coolest nightclubs in the country, surely this couldn't have launched the last major obscenity trial in the United States.

An avant-garde hit from 1959 to 1964 when the New York trial took over his life, Lenny Bruce was ultimately banned from England and Australia, as well as blackballed from many clubs in the United States. Arrested over and over again, he was finally sentenced to four months in the workhouse. He died, broke and broken, in 1966, of a drug overdose.

The first half of Speiser's The World of Lenny Bruce gives us Bruce's club act, and after the intermission we get Bruce sitting outside a New York courtroom, waiting to be called in to testify, telling an unseen person his story of outrage and injustice. By this time, he was strung out and shaky, filled with passionate indignation and unable to button his shirt cuffs. In neither event do we feel we're watching the real guy, but rather a well-fed, Borscht-belt version of Lenny Bruce. He isn't dangerous or edgy, but merely vulgar (not in the obscene sense but in the crass, unsophisticated sense).

As a view of an America in another frame of mind, this show is an interesting, albeit unintentional history lesson in what institutional and sociological attitudes fueled the rebellion of the 1960s and the early 1970s. But as an homage to a cultural icon, it's a bust.

-Toby Zinman