STAGE REVIEW : ‘Growing Up’ at Ensemble Studio

To model your own coming-out story on Dante’s “The Divine Comedy” smacks of hubris. But if an artist can pull it off, the concept adds a lyrical element to what might otherwise be a conventional and oft-told tale.

For the most part, Chris Cinque pulls it off in “Growing Up Queer in America,” at the Ensemble Studio Theatre’s downstairs stage.

Not only does she achieve moments of genuine poetic effect, but she also does justice to the “comedy” in that awesome title, “The Divine Comedy.” This one-woman show is a genial, lightly embellished memoir instead of an insurrectionary manifesto.

Cinque takes her listeners from a Catholic childhood “hell” in New Jersey to an adolescent and teen-age “purgatory” in Florida, to an adult “paradise” on the north shore of Lake Superior.

Actually “hell” is an exaggerated description of the childhood Cinque describes. Hers doesn’t sound notably more hellish than most childhoods. It’s true that she had to cope with one awful nun, but then so did every Catholic playwright in America. “Purgatory” too includes some hyperbole. For all of her talk about the possibility of gay-baiters knocking her off, her closest brush with anything resembling such danger is a brief and inconsequential appearance by some vice officers during her first visit to a lesbian bar.

Cinque tiptoes lightly around the experience that appears to have troubled her the most: her breakup with her first lover. Her reticence is probably due to an honorable desire to protect the privacy of others, but her mention of it left me wanting to hear more about it.

Regardless of any small imperfections in the text, Cinque knows how to tell a story. With a carefully modulated voice and impeccable timing, she deftly sketches a variety of characters. Her prowling of the stage (guided by the direction and design of Elisa River Stacy) is always purposeful.

She commanded attention last Saturday night for the full 80 minutes, despite a sweltering evening and a stuffy theater that caused some members of the audiences to call out for “Air!” during the brief pause between “Purgatory” and “Paradise.”

At 1089 N. Oxford Ave, Wednesdays through Sundays at 8 p.m., Sunday matinees at 3 p.m, through Oct. 9. Tickets: $10; (213) 466-2916.