Theater Review : This Boy’s Life: Passionate, Moving Road to Manhood

The title, “Cross-Dressing in the Depression,” is the only false note in the Southern California premiere of a short, haunting new memory play by Erin Cressida Wilson, a Theater E/Sledgehammer Theatre co-production staged at the latter’s church-like theater here.

This erotic and passionate tale of one boy’s sexual and spiritual awakening in the Depression evokes flashes of Tennessee Williams with its painfully wise and witty understanding of the interlocking nerves of memory, desire and yearning.

And a young and talented theater company, Theater E, working in co-production with Sledgehammer, mines all the sweetness and sadness from a richly suggestive script.

An old man, Old Wilder narrates the tale of himself as a young boy growing up in Denver during the Depression. In a tough time, Wilder has it tougher than most. His father has been sent to prison; his mother tells him she’s going to work as a maid, and, just as he is starting adolescence, he is sent to a brothel as a dishwasher.

“It was the Winter of Disappearance,” he remembers. “The winter of bread lines and Melora. The winter I ate icicles for dessert and fell asleep to the sick good smell of kerosene and the squeak of a hundred beds. Franklin and Eleanor were in the White House. Maggie and Jiggs were in the funnies. And Prince Albert? He was in the can.”

It’s a three-actor ensemble with one actor as Old Wilder, one as young Wilder and a third as Wilder’s mother, Jessie, and as the prostitute, Melora.

Theater E’s artistic director, Lisa Portes, directs the piece. Her casting choices may seem startling at first--particularly with a white actress, Linda Castro, as Old Wilder and black actor Damen Scranton, as the younger version.

But acting triumphs over preconceptions. Castro turns in a startlingly true and funny performance as the old man, getting everything just right, from the mannerisms, the self-mocking humor to a little shuffling dance. Scranton--wide-eyed, intense, fervent--captures the painful yearning of this man’s youth like a force of nature.

As Jessie/Melora, Andrea Renee Portes, the director’s sister, lends the mystery and beauty necessary to fascinate, frustrate and inspire Wilder from youth to age.

From the beginning, Wilder, who grows up in dark times, is seized by the idea of turning darkness into light. It’s an image exquisitely realized by Wilder gazing into light pouring up out of an old metal bucket.

It’s one of many memorable tableaux, from young Wilder watching his mother wash her back to Old Wilder offering Melora his glass eye. To serve the story, there is some nudity, none of it gratuitous. It is done tenderly and adds to the rawness of the story’s emotional truths.

The design crew also does class work in the stark staging area of Sledgehammer: a black, former funeral home with pillars and a high stage. Michelle Riel’s set--a sawdust floor and broken planking, a bed angled up as the center of the action, two birds in a cage, a mountain of sawdust supporting an old Victrola--tells its own story of the passing of time.

Pierre Clavel’s lighting is moody, romantic and, as needed, harshly on target. Michael Roth, resident composer of the La Jolla Playhouse, supplies original music that helps create a mood without distracting.

Mary Larson’s costume design artfully suggests the dreamy memories Wilder had of the women in his life while keeping Wilder’s own clothing realistically rough.

As for that title, well, director Portes has explained it in interviews as an erasing of the boundaries between male and female. Whatever. It’s just too forced for such a lusciously earthy and poignant play.

* “Cross-Dressing in the Depression,” Sledgehammer Theatre, 1620 6th Ave., San Diego. Thursdays-Sundays, 8 p.m. Ends July 10. $10-$15. (619) 544-1484. Running time: 58 minutes. Linda Castro Old Wilder

Andrea Renee Portes: Melora/Jessie/Little Melora

Damen Scranton: Wilder

A Sledgehammmer Theatre and Theater E co-production. By Erin Cressida Wilson. Directed by Lisa Portes. Sets: Michelle Riel. Lights: Pierre Clavel. Costumes: Mary Larson. Sound: Loren Rogers. Original music: Michael Roth. Assistant set design: John Busenberg. Stage manager: Katie Rodda.