A Whiff of Sweet Freedom in Daring, Incisive ‘Cologne’

The ubiquitous Tony Abatemarco has plied his craft on the local theater scenefor the past couple of decades, making a name for himself as director, writer and actor in a variety of celebrated productions. He is his own toughest act to follow.

Abatemarco can be seen at the peak of his craft in “Cologne, or the Ways Evil Enters the World,” a daring, savagely incisive one-man play about a gay youth’s sexual coming of age in the 1960s. Based on Abatemarco’s own short story, this production at the Tiffany confirms Abatemarco as a master of the solo form.

Under the typically insightful direction of David Schweizer, another ubiquitous theatrical practitioner with an impressive list of credits stretching back to the ‘70s, Abatemarco relates the adolescent misadventures of Tony, an orphaned boy being raised by an older sister in suburban Long Island. We suspect Tony is the exponent of Abatemarco’s own youthful self, but autobiographical or not, the character is fully fleshed and precociously fleshly, ever at the mercy of his internally combusting hormones. Fourteen when we first meet him, Tony celebrates the senses with an emphasis on the olfactory--those cheap colognes of yesteryear that serve as a redolent undercurrent to his various escapades.

Cavorting to vintage Beatles tunes, Abatemarco conveys Tony’s awakening with a lightheartedness that soon yields to darker reality. Tony’s brushes with homophobia and self-loathing are burdensome baggage on his path to adulthood--until the watershed of Stonewall changes his life.

Dan Weingarten’s ever-shifting lighting is integral to the tone, and Julie Ferrin’s sound design beautifully underscores the narrative. Equally accomplished as both actor and wordsmith, Abatemarco vaults the great divide between youth and experience with breathtaking ease, all the while evoking a keen nostalgia for a time of wonder, dread and transformation.

* “Cologne, or the Ways Evil Enters the World,” Tiffany Theater, 8532 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood. Mondays, 8 p.m. Ends May 22. $18. (310) 289-2999. Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes.