'ioye! For my dear brooklyn': hopscotching between worlds

pulse

March 19, 2018 2:18 AM

NEW YORK — Toward the end of his solo show, “¡Oye! For My Dear Brooklyn,” Modesto Jimenez, aka Flako, had to place a call. He was a bit tipsy and no, it could not wait.

Except, of course, this interlude was very much a part of “¡Oye!,” a loosely structured mix of autobiographical morsels and ruminations on identity, immigration, gentrification and art that’s playing at the Abrons Arts Center.

Jimenez, a writer-performer who moved to Brooklyn when he was 9, segues seamlessly between reminiscences and digressions, English and Spanish. There are no supertitles, so monolingual theatergoers will be at a bit of a disadvantage, but Jimenez usually hopscotches deftly between the two languages so you can pick up some of what you may have missed.

But the bilingual element is not the most distinctive aspect of the show. That would be the bicultural fluidity so central to many immigrant New Yorkers.

After settling in Bushwick, where he was raised by his grandmother, Jimenez discovered theater and gang life. “Latino guys should have Sweet Sixteens,” he says. “Maybe I would never have joined the black-and-gold brigade.” He is referring to the Latin Kings, whose activities helped him pay for extras when he attended Bennington College.

In a scene whose pedagogical matter-of-factness is both chilling and funny, Jimenez stuffs cocaine (we’ll assume legal constraints and an off-off-Broadway budget mean it’s actually flour) into a condom, which he then lubricates so it can be inserted into — let’s just leave the rest to your imagination.

Jimenez joined a different tight-knit group after Bennington: the experimental wing of the New York theater scene. He danced in the Wooster Group’s “Early Shaker Spirituals,” played a Times Square Elmo in “Furry!/La Furia!” at the Bushwick Starr and appeared in Richard Maxwell’s apocalyptic western, “Samara.”

Such experiences clearly brought dividends. Jimenez, tall and rail-thin, moves with understated elegance and confidence, and his text exhibits poetic flow and a culturally omnivorous unruliness.

That last aspect is as bracing as it can be frustrating. As soon as the show, which is directed by Artem Yatsunov, broaches an interesting subject or brings up a colorful anecdote, it flits to another.

In one scene, for instance, Jimenez muses, “To be black and Latino in America and be loved truly, loved for being you, I haven’t seen it,” all the while putting on whiteface makeup. He then goes into a dense soliloquy incorporating the Dominican baseball player Sammy Sosa, “Hamlet” and Rafael Trujillo, the dictator who ruled the Dominican Republic in the 20th century. James Baldwin also figures, via video.

This would be a lot to absorb for any show, and here it takes up just a few minutes. We can only hope Jimenez slows down a bit next time.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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