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Mambo mouth
John Leguizamo motors on
BY LIZA WEISSTUCH



A trip down memory lane with John Leguizamo is no leisurely stroll. His reminiscences are full-throttle, whiplash-inducing sprints across the hormone-drenched terrain of puberty and through the wet, prickly pastures of romance. On his latest joyride, Sexaholix . . . a love story, which opened on Broadway last December and pulls into the Colonial Theatre this Tuesday, Leguizamo maniacally leads his guests through a gallery of his dysfunctional family members, vapid but endearing cronies, and the saucy girlfriends with whom he has, for the most part, failed at love.

Some might say the narcissistic introspection bit is as overdone as your Memorial Day barbecued burger, but with his physical versatility and verbal virility, Leguizamo puts a fresh spin on it. As he describes his native borough of Queens with a flagrant disdain for political correctness, the ghetto sounds more like a carnival. Or maybe it’s more of a sideshow. Sexaholix may be a one-man show, but with his knack for mimicry, Leguizamo effects quick transformations that bring his family and friends to the stage. He sees it " almost like being crazy, but you get paid for it. "

Off stage, however, the man who motors the mambo mouth is frank but disarmingly soft-spoken and given to mid-sentence pauses as he edits himself. " Life is pretty ridiculous, you know. And my childhood was pretty crazy, and depressing. But then there were a lot of really incredible fun things. Home life was funky, but my social life was amazing. And I was lucky that way. I think that’s what made me who I am today. I had a lot of funny friends, and my family was dark, and that was good. It gave me a lot of material. "

But sending up one’s personal life on stage is bound to agitate things on the home front. More than a few writers can testify to being railed at — if not banished — by offended family and friends. And no matter how many fans Leguizamo attracts, they can’t shield him from the wrath of Latin Dad. Still, after threatening lawsuits in response to Freak, Leguizamo’s third one-man show (after Mambo Mouth and Spic-O-Rama) but first autobiographical rant, his family seem to be getting used to the salsa-seasoned roast.

" My father had no clue Freak was going to be about him, " Leguizamo recalls. " I told him I’m doing another show and he goes, ‘Oh, you are? Am I in it?’ I said, ‘Just a little bit.’ He goes, ‘A little bit is too much.’ This time they’re not as unhappy. They’re not as vocally aggressive and hostile to me about it. Sexaholix is more bittersweet for them. They enjoy it — they wish they weren’t in it — but they enjoy it because it’s not as angry of a piece. I vented pretty hard in Freak, so it took me to another level in my evolution as a man, as an artist. This one is definitely much more life-affirming. "

Much of Leguizamo’s shift in perspective comes from the life-altering events he explores (and exploits) in the show, such as finding his soul mate and having children. His son and daughter, who are a year and a half and two and a half years old respectively, have prompted changes he could never have forecast, like a forthcoming move to Fifth Avenue, where life is what he calls " kinda sterile. "

But such unforeseen twists have come to dominate his life. Back when he was growing up, he never would have guessed he’d join the ranks of performers like Richard Pryor, Margaret Cho, and Eric Bogosian, who plumb their psyche and their culture to make art. And you’d have had a tough time convincing him he’d be dodging women’s lingerie as he did it.

Looking back, Leguizamo credits his Latin culture for landing him the job he has today. " I do recall, now, always going, ‘Know what? I love storytellers.’ I love people who could tell stories about their life and make it so fascinating and really reveal the true things. Now, examining where my passion came from, it was back then, people who could tell those amazing stories about their families and the crazy stories of relatives. That’s a big thing about our culture, I’ve come to realize. Latin people love to sit around and tell these elaborate stories. "

That realization has made Leguizamo a kind of cultural ambassador on top of being a writer, an actor (he played Toulouse-Lautrec in Moulin Rouge), and a stand-up comic. He says he likes people to leave his show thinking " that they wish they were born Latin. " If they do, then all his hard work living, and living to tell about it, will have paid off.

Sexaholix . . . a love story is at the Colonial Theatre June 4 through 9. Tickets are $25 to $70 and are available at the Colonial box office, or through Ticketmaster at (617) 931-2787.

Issue Date: May 30-June 6, 2002
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