![]() ![]() ![]() The solo play, written and performed by James Lecesne (writer of the Academy. The premise of the piece is that no one in this Jersey Shore town properly appreciated this unabashedly out-there youth - who wore makeup and constructed a wild pair of platform sneakers by gluing a half-dozen colorful flip-flops together - until he was no longer around. The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey celebrated its opening night at Sag Harbor's Bay Street Theater. ![]() His 2008 novel, “Absolute Brightness,” on which this show is based, produced Leonard Pelkey, a 14-year-old boy who has gone missing and will eventually turn up dead - murdered. “After the Storm,” his documentary film about a group of teens who survived Hurricane Katrina, led to a foundation providing support to New Orleans community centers that work with young people. He wrote the screenplay for “Trevor,” a short film about a troubled youth that not only won an Academy Award in 1995 but also launched The Trevor Project, a national suicide and crisis intervention network for at-risk LGBTQ kids. Lecesne comes by his bleeding heart honorably. But the threat of emotional blackmail still hangs over this sentimental play, in which the scribe and solo performer plays the multiple roles of the residents of the little New Jersey town where Leonard lived. Chances are writer-performer James Lecesne will not leap down from the stage and slap you around for being unmoved by “The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey,” his earnest one-man show lamenting the death of a sensitive gay teenager who was murdered for being sensitive and gay. ![]()
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