L-VIS LIVE!
Written and Performed by Kevin Coval
Directed by Jess McLeod
VG Biograph Theater, 2433 N. Lincoln (map)
thru April 15 | tickets: $20 | more info
Check for half-price tickets
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Stuck in the wrong race
Victory Gardens presents
L-VIS LIVE!
Review by Lawrence Bommer
In less than an hour Chicago performer Kevin Coval conjures up a raw craving that earns its audience. (“L-VIS LIVE!” is the latest offering in Victory Gardens Theater’s “Fresh Squeezed” Series.) Not just a wanna-be hipster poet, his needy character L-vis (the name taken from another white guy who borrowed heavily from black music) is a “wigger” (to cite the crudest term for his jungle fever) who loves to explore—but ends up exploiting—the world of Public Enemy and Snoop Dogg. Alas, he’d be lucky to end up a Kurt Cobain clone. But, like a transgendered seeker of different sexual parts, L-vis
Warmly shaped by Jess McLeod and based on Coval’s book “L-vis Lives! Racemusic Poems,” this twisted homage depicts a north suburban dreamer who relates to the wrong race. In junior high school tried to rap a friend into winning a student election—but was totally ignored by his confused classmates. That disconnect sets the pattern for a whiteboy who resembles a bootleg Rolex: “We can’t keep time.”
Resembling the nerdy rec room of “Wayne’s World,” L-vis crib is a cluttered basement with a 70-style ottoman, piles of boxes and recordings of his favorite rapper idols. Wanting to be a hero, he breathlessly demonstrates his street cred through a furtive attempt at breakdancing, a “letter to Al Jolson” (who had his own blackface urges), and a fantasy about a world tour that will crown him the new Eminem. With increasingly disastrous results, L-vis riffs on “Yo mamma’s so white…” (You can write the rest.) An authoritarian voice-over interrupts the action to speculate on what drives white boys to becomes something they’re not.
Of course, Coval’s angry lyrical outbursts aren’t as amateurish as L-vis fears (or we wouldn’t be here). Boombox flights of fancy, they build like a potent poetry slam with colliding metaphors and desperate name dropping.
Also, this doomed quest for the wrong racial authenticity isn’t quite as charming as it seems. L-vis wants to fit in and at the end, as, confusing himself with Malcolm X, he discovers Islam. Suddenly his reclusiveness takes on a dangerous jihadist slant.
So there’s an edge to this mixed-race mashup. Coval may “represent” a few more lethally lost souls than this underestimated L-vis where the world tour is around the basement.
Rating: ★★★
L-VIS LIVE! continues through April 15th at Richard Christiansen Theater, 2433 N. Lincoln (map), with performances Thursdays-Saturdays at 7:30pm. Tickets are $20, and are available by phone (773-871-3000) or online here (check for half-price tickets at Goldstar.com). More information at VictoryGardens.org. (Running time: 75-minutes with no intermission)