Laughs abound in Leguizamo’s ‘Ghetto Klown’

CLASS ‘KLOWN’: John Leguizamo in his one-man Broadway show ‘Ghetto Klown’ at the Lyceum. Photo: Carol Rosegg

By Scott Harrah

John Leguizamo is a man of many talents, star of stage, TV, and screen, but primarily known to New Yorkers for the Off-Broadway shows Mambo Mouth and Spic-O-Rama, and his previous Broadway credits Freak and Sexaholix…A Love Story.  His latest Broadway, one-man extravaganza, Ghetto Klown, is the 46-year-old’s most serious effort to date, as it depicts the ups and downs of his career and his roots as a Colombian/Puerto Rican growing up in Queens in what he aptly describes as “a cautionary tale.”

Don’t come to Ghetto Klown  expecting a 100% accurate depiction of the star’s career, as the Playbill itself contains an “Author’s Note” from Mr. Leguizamo admitting that “some moments in the piece fall out of their original timeline to create a more original narrative.” This is evident in everything from the show’s depiction of the decades of his life, from the 1960s well up to the 2000s.  Snippets of songs we know were 1980s hits, for example, are played when we’re supposed to be watching him reenact moments of the 1990s.  In addition, jokes are made about points in his career that we know are not actually chronological; and he takes much creative license with some of the facts.  However, it would be petty to focus on these things because there’s so much to love here about Mr. Leguizamo’s exuberant energy and manic stage presence.

More than anything, Ghetto Klown is a humorous, spoken-word autobiography that covers the highlights of his life, dishing in a sort of macho, Kathy-Griffin-style way about studying under Lee Strasberg and working with many big-name stars and directors in Hollywood:  Don Johnson on TV’s “Miami Vice”; Al Pacino in Carlito’s Way;  Patrick Swayze and Wesley Snipes in To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything…Julie Newmar (in which he played drag queen Chi Chi Rodriguez); Australian auteur Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet, co-starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes.  He talks about working with people like Stephen Seagal and Kurt Russell in Executive Decision (and neither is exactly painted in a positive light), but watches what he says when discussing why Sean Penn slapped him while they were both filming Brian DePalma’s Casualties of War.

The celebrity name-dropping is the show’s high point, but there’s much more here than just Mr. Leguizamo talking about his successes.  He also covers some of his biggest failures, most notably the short-lived Fox TV series “House of Buggin’ ” in 1995.  The show was supposed to be a Latino version of “In Living Color,” but Mr. Leguizamo wouldn’t budge when Fox executives reportedly wanted him to ax some cast members, after the first few episodes, and he left the series and Fox turned it into “MADtv.”

He pays homage to his Latino roots throughout, and there are a few Spanish jokes that only a New York audience (familiar with the rich Latin American culture here) could appreciate.  Some of the material about his personal life, endless stories about his wife, remembrances of his late grandfather, a childhood friend, and his bouts with depression and inner demons, become repetitive after awhile.

Director Fisher Steven mostly gives Mr. Leguizamo free rein to flesh out the many characters and delightful details of his life. Although some of his anecdotes may seem far-fetched, Mr. Leguizamo still makes us laugh and packs lots of gritty entertainment into more than two hours by simply telling jokes, baring his soul, sipping beer, with nothing but a few screen projections and old hip-hop songs to help him out.  Ghetto Klown will most certainly please Mr.Leguizamo’s many fans, the people who will truly appreciate his nonstop zaniness.  However, the show lacks the vision of such earlier works as Sexaholix…A Love Story and Freak. Ghetto Klown would be tighter and more streamlined if director Fisher Stevens had shortened some of the skits and trimmed the extemporaneous material.

Published March 28, 2011
Reviewed at press performance on March 25, 2011