In Chris Anger’s one-man comedy “Jim Thorpe: All American” presented at Slant Culture Theatre Festival, the narrative past is drenched in alcohol. The cheap kind. Mad Dog 20/20, Night Train wine, White Wolf vodka. The stuff of bums. Because, as Anger tells, he once was an alcoholic bum. Sleeping in roach nest “hotels” in Oakland, NJ, where (to paraphrase) cockroaches even lived in his old radio, always changing the station to classical.
In this presentation, sad fuels the funny. Anger’s unstable past is examined, reflected upon, made new with a punchline. Most of the comedy reads like an essay, Anger sitting at a desk in Walden Theatre’s Alt-Space (as if he’s his own student), moving through printed manuscript. Lots of history is dissected: Jim Thorpe’s, one of the most versatile athletes in the U.S.; Anger’s lineage, he says mostly drunks; bits about Civil War times; Anger’s time on the streets. All of the failures and fumbles start from a sad source, a rough life. It’s honestly a little depressing.
But Anger doesn’t let us slip into complete darkness. Instead, he uses surprising images to balance or counteract (can’t decide) sad sentiment. Surprising images: monkeys at the zoo, alcoholic clocks, that cockroach radio, and comparing the bike wreck which led to his once-fractured skull, where he says his problems began, to “a team of half-baked Jamaican bobsledders.”
In that moment, catapulting, time stood still. Anger was weightless. Free. He says it was the moment between “Oh, shit” and “Oh, fuck.” He uses this feeling, this suspension, a couple times throughout the story. It sticks. We’ve all had some sort of similar something that’s left us unthinking and directionless.
It’s possible that Anger wanted to put us there, in that place. In the air, sans gravity, life flash. It’s possible he wants us to fall, get back up, live to tell about it, laugh at it. To remember the weighty lightly. To win that battle.
After all, Jim Thorpe did.
Photo from Slant Culture Theatre Fest website
