There is no other word for it. David Cale is a bloomin' marvel.
Throughout the 90-minute opening night performance (with no intermission) of The History of Kisses, Cale metamorphosed into several different characters--male and female, old and young, gay and straight--without one moment of hesitation. He also sang quick bursts of sea shanties in between characters, and at one point even played the concertina!
The stage setting was a beach (with sand that really crumbled). In the middle of the vast quantities (more than 11 tons!) of sand sits a lonely lifeguard chair. You could hear the roar of the ocean waves and almost smell the sea salt in the air. If you lifted your head, you could nearly spot sea gulls. What more could one want from a performance in hopelessly landlocked Kansas City?
There is joy, exhilaration, giddiness (bordering on silliness), and heartbreak in "The History of Kisses." And everything that happens onstage is conveyed by just one man.
As a writer, I took particular delight in the storyline of a writer trying to finish a book of short stories (mostly of love affairs) that take place by the sea. The writer sequesters himself in a seaside motel in California and then gets involved in the lives of other people he meets there, so that they become interconnected characters in his book. In the end, the writer himself is a character in the book as he, too, has a love affair which begins in a nearby town.
This play is not for the puritanical. Yet, as artistic director Eric Rosen mentioned prior to the performance, "Nothing is said or alluded to in this script that you can't find every day on basic cable TV."
The nine different characters are eccentric enough to pique universal interest and yet they experience human emotions that just about anyone in the audience could identify with. And they are anything but one-dimensional. They grow and change throughout Cale's portrayals. A randy Australian surfer, drowning, finds redemption when he is pulled back from the sea by whales. An older man who has a chance encounter with Judy Garland learns something about himself, and his life is changed in the process.
Mostly, the characters portrayed in "The History of Kisses" learn to take chances--on life, on love, and on each other.
And here is another magical thing about this play. When you see it, you have the chance to learn something new about yourself, too. Cale's insights might not become your own, but you are bound to look at the idiosyncrasies of human nature in a completely different way.
That is the true beauty of theater, quite apart from the entertainment value--the "take away."
The History of Kisses runs through November 27 at the Kansas City Repertory Theatre's Copaken Stage. Call 816-235-2700 or go to www.kcrep.org for tickets to a Kansas City Getaway that will stick with you.
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