COLOR ME EDWARDO
Thomas-Herrera’s work occupies that blurry space between performance poetry, in which poetry’s the game, and performance art, in which concept’s the game. But unfortunately he doesn’t seem to play to the strengths of either genre. Instead of adopting one or the other wholeheartedly, he hangs his poetry in Color Me Edwardo on a rather flimsily articulated idea about the end of the world. The result is a piece that’s tentative at best and shallow at worst.
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This is too bad, because Thomas-Herrera has considerable talents. A classically handsome man who deliberately plays against type–he could have gone the Rock Hudson route but chooses Jerry Lewis instead–Thomas-Herrera has presence and flair. He’s blessed with a face that, with one twitch, can make the house roar. There is a great fluidity to his physical humor, probably best exemplified in this show when he dances a tango with a coat tree–a piece of choreography that brilliantly implies poignant Hollywood dreams.
The Clytemnestra piece is atypical, though, in that it’s in the third person. For the most part Thomas-Herrera writes in the first person and from what we can assume are mostly autobiographical perspectives. But in these pieces too Hester’s presence is problematic: when he says, “I’m too much of a lady,” for example, it’s hard to tell whether he’s speaking for or through Hester’s female persona or for himself. Without Hester, that line would have a whole different resonance–a real bite, which here is obfuscated by her presence. (And the confusion’s obviously a by-product, not deliberate.)
