STAGE REVIEW : Angry Preaching Puts Unnecessary Shackles on ‘Freedom and Other Myths’

Freedom was America’s rallying cry when it broke from Great Britain in 1776. But, in 214 years, if Americans have learned anything, it is that freedom is more than just pushing someone’s army off your soil.

Freedom is also the freedom to think, to feel, to believe and to love whom one loves, regardless of race, creed or sex.

Stanley Fried, in a series of monologues called “Freedom and Other Myths” at Sushi Performance Gallery tonight, wonders whether America is really comfortable with freedom. Aren’t stereotypes and racial slurs a way of limiting freedom by keeping people in some predetermined place, he asks in “Jungle Bunny.”

It’s a nice point, but one that smacks of preaching to the converted. It is hard to imagine any of the dozen or so people who turned up at Sushi on opening night defending stereotypes.

Fried makes some elegant points about the illusion of freedom in America: “We were free to be what we were taught we were supposed to be.”

But he slips just as easily into banality when he describes how he felt being identified first as a Jew, then as a gay. “I was an object, not a person.”

Standing alone on a corner of the bare Sushi space, with a chair, a hot white light and a compact disc player, Fried holds out the promise of intimacy with the storyteller. Fried’s best moments come when he lets the dogma go and tells us stories that feel personal and true.

The best piece in the 90-minute show is called “Abbott,” a tale originally presented at the “Actors for Life” benefit in San Diego. It tells the story of a man who died of AIDS-related pneumonia.

“There was this one time with Abbott,” he begins with music playing softly in the background. As the story unravels, it delves into the coming of age of the narrator and the emotional devastation left by his father’s death. It becomes the story of a friendship, replete with all the longings, frustrations and satisfactions that come with caring deeply. It becomes a story of loss for anyone who has lost someone dear and doesn’t know what to do with his feelings for that person anymore.

The story, as narrative, has its flaws. Instead of staying one step ahead of the listener, Fried throws out clue after clue that Abbott has AIDS, without letting his narrator catch on. (Abbott shows up at the door tired and weak, after having suffered from shingles and pneumonia; he cheers up at the thought of crashing on a roadside, and the narrator doesn’t have a clue that anything is wrong with him?)

Then, too, the narrator never once questions that he himself may have caught AIDS from Abbott, even though they had been lovers once.

Is it really possible that this man has not a thought in the world for himself?

But the sense of the narrator’s heart hurting is, ultimately, what touches the listener’s heart.

Fried also touches on the ‘60s. The usual points are made about love-ins and people wanting their rights, and Fried is back into his role of the angry preacher, explaining acidly to all the morons out there how we all have ears but do not hear, etc. etc.

The tedium of these holier-than-thou moments would make it easy to dismiss this show if it were not for other moments, all too brief, when Fried turns to the personal tales that draw the listener in.

Ironically, it is the personal narratives that hold the promise of moving mountains more than the overtly political points do. Fried has a rich ore of material to dig from in the story of the disenfranchised gay class seeking its place in America. Let him avail himself of the freedom to explore that tale in its fullness, and he will find a greater wealth of stories than he has found here.

“FREEDOM AND OTHER MYTHS”

Written and performed by Stanley Fried. At 8 p.m. today. Tickets are $7 for Sushi members, $10 general admission. At 852 8th Ave., San Diego, (619) 235-8466.