Review by Temple Lentz
Lemon Andersen is a hell of a performer, and the press pictures and descriptions for this show just don’t do him justice. He’s a hard-edged, roughneck kid from Brooklyn, more at ease on the streets than in a theater seat, and gifted with a silver tongue and a way with words that helped him lift himself up, and take others with him in the process.
In “County of Kings: The Beautiful Struggle,” Lemon unfolds his memoir, from being a kid in Brooklyn when Brooklyn was the ghetto, watching drugs and AIDS take his mother, and letting money and survival take himself–to being an ex-con with a love of words who discovered poetry and discovered his true purpose: to “take my lemons and make the best goddamned lemonade.”
Lemon is funny, smart, touching, and terrifying, and he’s got a crazy physicality and flexibility of voice that lets him completely inhabit the characters he’s creating onstage to tell his story. Part hip-hop storytelling, part poetry, the show is a coming-of-age memoir of a kid who had to grow up way too quickly, and has spent much of his time on earth playing catch-up, and trying to figure out what he left behind.
Check him out at www.lemonshood.com. You’ll be seeing him again, and hes only going to keep getting better.
This was the most impressive show I’d seen so far at the festival (until the Mike Daisey performance directly afterward) by a long shot. After looking fruitlessly for poignancy in Geisha and Reggie Watts, Lemon nailed it for me by being real and having something to actually say that wasn’t esoteric or convoluted. He deserved the sold-out crowd that came out for Watts. Check his last performance tonight before he’s gone and pray he’ll come back again.