THEATER REVIEW : A Harrowing, Hilarious Holly Hughes

Holly Hughes carries heavy baggage into Highways. You don’t see it. You feel it.

“Clit Notes,” Hughes’ first produced work since being denied a National Endowment for the Arts grant in 1990, is an attempt to leave behind the burdens of self-censorship and political martyrdom. But it’s also an attempt to exorcise private demons by sharing autobiographical stories.

“There is a war going on and all of us have been hit,” Hughes declares, “some of us worse than others.” During her 90-minute monologue, she reveals the scope of that war with harrowing and hilarious confessions. Although occasionally over-written, “Clit Notes” is remarkable literature expressed with an emotional honesty that transcends conventional theater.

But it doesn’t begin on a promising note. Hughes imitates the commentator William F. Buckley in awkward caricature. She sits at a table, sipping water, holding a microphone, licking the air, satirizing the moralists who condemn her lifestyle and work.

The Buckley impersonation introduces her as an “alleged performance artist,” then quotes former NEA chairman John E. Frohnmeyer: “Holly Hughes is a lesbian. Her work is heavily of that genre.”

The sketch concludes with a question: “Are you mad at the whole goddamned world or only at your own family?”

This question ends all parody. Hughes drops the persona, leaves behind the political debate and begins a profoundly personal saga about her relationship to her father. These stories ultimately become a metaphor for her conflict with her conservative critics, whom she sees as both repressive and patriarchal.

“When my father said the word cancer ,” she remembers, “I knew I had to go home.” Home to a Michigan farm meant shrinking herself “to get back in. All my father ever wanted,” Hughes adds with sympathy, “was to have a normal life.” And the worst thing that ever happened to her father?

“You’re looking at it,” Hughes confesses. Her “coming to” as a lesbian was worse than the cancer that killed him. Consequently, “Silence had always been his first language. My first language was escape.”

But cancer and the scandalous NEA publicity changed the father-daughter dynamic. “Why are you doing that to us?” he asked her. “You want to humiliate us. You act like you had no shame, no family.”

The remainder of “Clit Notes” proudly demonstrates “what made me give up all hope of a normal life.” Hughes ranges wide for an explanation, comically exploring performance art, childhood erotic experiences, her discovery of the clitoris, three years of hell as a waitress and closing with a beautiful description of life with her lover.

Hughes rapturously describes their relationship, but suddenly transforms the fairy-tale romance into a heartbreaking anecdote of her lover’s alienation from her own family.

“We’re good at acting shameless,” Hughes concludes. “Our invisibility does not ensure our safety. We’re never safe. We’re just. . . .” Hughes doesn’t finish the sentence. She just fades away into a gradual blackout.

For the audience, this ending is cathartic. Hopefully, it is for Hughes as well.

* “Clit Notes,” Highways, 1651 18th St . , Santa Monica. Thursday-Sunday, 8:30 p.m. Ends Sept. 11. $12. (213) 660-8587. Running time: 90 minutes.