One might enter “Like They Do in the Movies” — Laurence Fishburne’s one-man show currently playing at the Perelman Performing Arts Center in downtown Manhattan — expecting a monologue stringing together funny anecdotes about the veteran actor’s long history in Hollywood. From the ’70s coming-of-age classic “Cornbread, Earl and Me” to career-defining roles in the franchises of both “The Matrix” and “John Wick,” the 62-year-old thespian surely has his share of stockpiled stories. That’s not what this is at all. “Like They Do in the Movies” instead goes autobiographical in searingly personal ways ultimately centered on the actor’s mercurial relationship with his mother. A therapeutic, cathartic performance for Fishburne, it’s also highly entertaining.
“More on that later,” he says continually throughout the first half of the show, dropping narrative breadcrumbs about palliative care, paternity tests and more intimate details expanded on in the second act. Opening the show dressed in a sweeping sequined caftan, his rather androgynous ensemble lets him fluidly assume the occasional mannerisms and dialogue of his mother. According to Fishburne, Hattie Crawford — a, by all accounts, brilliant, “fast” woman from the South — imprinted Fishburne with unrealized creative impulses of her own that made him the Oscar-nominated actor he is today. That upbringing also carried its share of sexual abuse, grief and deception. But more on that later.
Sandwiched between opening and closing set pieces involving his mom are several character studies, wherein Fishburne alternately assumes the roles of a gruff Irish-American in a Manhattan bar, a friend who soldiered through Hurricane Katrina with his family, a homeless car washer in Tribeca, a celebrity bodyguard, and a Black L.A. expat running a brothel in Australia. All five interact with an unseen, unheard Laurence Fishburne as they tell their tales, and his embodiment of the roles shows the influence of character monologuists like Whoopi Goldberg, John Leguizamo and Anna Deavere Smith (all of whom Fishburne thanks in the production notes).
“Like They Do in the Movies” stands on the twin pillars of politics and Fishburne’s personal history. He cautions at the beginning that some stories are real and others heavily embellished, but the tale told from the Hurricane Katrina survivor’s perspective will leave audiences moved, regardless. The New Orleans native explains that his wife, a local OB-GYN, refused to leave her hospital patients in the wake of the impending storm; abandoning plans to evacuate, husband and wife (with their infant child) stay at the hospital amid power outages, dwindling food, and death. The segment raises some of the same civil issues explored in Spike Lee’s 2006 documentary “When the Levees Broke,” but through one survivor’s gripping personal lens.
Best experienced live, Fishburne’s detailing of his private family history takes turns eliciting humor and generating sympathy for both the actor and his octogenarian mother. During his childhood, Hattie Crawford ran a charm school — his Brooklyn home decorated with several full-length wall mirrors as women took turns striking poses and strutting the catwalk of his living room. In the play, Fishburne depicts the character playing his mother as one who plies her child with “nasty pills” on occasion, and takes sexual advantage of him during the same years she pushed him toward early film roles like “Mr. Clean” in the Vietnam War epic, “Apocalypse Now.”
More details involving his mother’s ultimate diagnosis of a lifelong narcissistic personality disorder and deceit involving Fishburne’s paternity enrich “Like They Do in the Movies” — again, best seen live to be fully appreciated. Audiences are left with an eccentric love story between Hattie and Fishburne that may have birthed one of Black America’s best actors, but not without leaving behind scars on his soul.
“Like They Do in the Movies” runs at the Perelman Performing Arts Center through March 31.
Miles Marshall Lewis (@MMLunlimited) is an author and Harlem-based cultural critic whose work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, GQ, Rolling Stone and many other outlets. Lewis is currently finishing a cultural biography of comedian Dave Chappelle, his follow-up to Promise That You Will Sing About Me: The Power and Poetry of Kendrick Lamar.
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