Although we only see a brief, blurry image of Leonard projected on a screen, he emerges as a vivid character, typified by his self-made rainbow-colored platform sneakers constructed out of the glued-together bottoms of flip-flops. It is NOW PLAYING at the Westside Theatre in NYC. Using quicksilver transformations of voice and physicality, Lecesne plays Ellen as well as a multitude of characters including her teenage daughter an elderly German shopkeeper a mobster’s widow a video-playing teenage boy and the fey British owner of the town’s school of drama and dance, who says of Leonard, “I don’t think I’ve ever met a child who could express himself so thoroughly with jazz hands.”Īlthough the culprit is eventually found, the play is not so much about solving the crime, which is given perfunctory treatment, as about the effect that the perpetually sunny youth had on others, including the detective who never actually met him. The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey is an Off-Broadway play written by and starring James Lecesne, co-founder of The Trevor Project.

Although Leonard has only been missing for “19 hours, 47 minutes,” she’s worried that he might have been harmed for his apparent gayness. “This is the case that put us on the Mapquest,” he informs us early on, before relating how he was informed of Leonard’s disappearance by his guardian Ellen, the 40-something proprietor of the local beauty salon. The story is told through the perspective of Chuck DeSantis, a hard-boiled detective in a small Jersey shore town. Read More ‘American Psycho’ Musical Headed for Broadway On one extraordinary day, he finds it: the disappearance of teenager Leonard Pelkey. Chuck DeSantis is a brash New Jersey detective eager for a case that gets him out from behind his desk. Tony Nominations: Oscar Isaac, Danielle Brooks, 'Ain't No Mo,' '1776' Among Snubs and Surprises The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey.

Leonard pelkey