Having recently won an Oscar for Best Live Short Film, and an Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Solo Performance (in a show playing simultaneously at the Promenade), Lecesne is obviously on a roll, and well worth checking out the buzz.
One will find a splendid actor with a trained speaking and singing voice (contralto, yet!) both resonant and charismatic, looking like Ralph Fiennes in the right light, holding himself and moving with complete fluidity, ease, and under-control authority. In other words, this young man's performance is embossed with the unmistakable, raised edges of genius -- a dangerous word to use outside the history books, especially for reviewers.
But whether chanting Buddhist prayers, or portraying a Chekhovian triptych of the character Vershinin, or presenting Vershinin's admirer, Masha ("avec kugel"), Lecesne inhabited his quirky characters as if he'd written them himself.
William Harper achieved minor operatic dimensions in a score that included complicated counterpoint, gospel, and Latin dirge, pleasingly sung by Lecesne, Jeannine Otis, Serafina Martino, and Christine Sperry. (An important quibble: many words were not understandable.)
The costumes by Donna Zakowska were discreet and mainly put the lead performer in hospital dishabille.
It may go too far to have noticed nationalistic symbolism in the stark and eerie red, white, and blue lighting effects by Michael Chybowski against the scrimmed, silver, plastic, black, white, and neatly appointed set by Bradley Wester; but everything worked together well. In fact, it was a directorial triumph for the many theatrical elements in this piece to be so amazingly well-integrated. (To give one example: the instrumental music mixed with sounds of life support machines. The sound design was by Richard Jansen.)
Everything served to underscore an extremely well-rounded presentation of an extraordinarily promising, compassionate, self-revealing, and dashing actor who will no doubt one day be a star. It will be interesting to watch his ascent.
Copyright 1999 Marshall Yaeger