Theatre in Review: The Lion (Lynn Redgrave Theater)

	Photo: Matthew Murphy

The Lion achieves its remarkable emotional pull with the minimum number of elements: a simple set, nice lighting, half a dozen guitars, and a single bared soul. The latter belongs to Benjamin Scheuer, who, casually, as if chatting with a roomful of friends, tells the story of how he became a man, using a suite of specially composed songs that, time and time again, cut to the heart of the matter with devastating swiftness and clarity.

Scheuer grew up in New York with his parents and two brothers. His father was a talented musician but his brilliance at math led him into an academic career. In the charming "Cookie Tin Banjo," he recalls bonding with his dad over a music lesson, using the toy instrument made for the occasion. As he expresses in another number, his father sees his trio of sons as little lions entrusted to his care. But the quality of his love can be extremely variable. Benjamin's father is subject to terrible mood swings, offering coldly destructive criticism -- for example, when the boy does poorly in math at school. In one quietly horrifying sequence, he describes the older man falling into a rage, seizing Benjamin's water cannon and stomping it to pieces. The father-son relationship only becomes more fraught with tension over the years, reaching its climax when an act of adolescent rebellion is quickly followed by his father's sudden death.

Feeling guilty and abandoned, Benjamin, along with his brothers, is whisked to England by their British mother. He believes that, as the eldest son, it is his duty to assume head-of-the-family status, but, alone in a country where he knows no one, he becomes even more alienated. Sent to boarding school, he acts out, taking on the role of the snotty, entitled adolescent that the adults around him already believe him to be.

Escaping from school at 18, Benjamin returns to America and takes up a music career, growing more and more distant from his family. He finds a girlfriend, Julia, but their blissful early time together gradually cools, especially after she tells him, "You're the loneliest person I know." By now, he is visiting his father's grave, talking to him as if he were still alive. Not long after Julia leaves him for a round-the-world tour, he begins to suffer night sweats and loss of weight. When a fall in Grand Central Station leads to three breaks in his pelvic bone, he learns that he has cancer. He isn't quite 30.

The rest of The Lion's brief, 70-minute running time details how Benjamin heals, both physically and emotionally, and reconnects with his family. In a project that threatens to turn maudlin every step of the way, Scheuer never puts a foot wrong, narrating his family history in plain, just-the-facts fashion and letting his songs provide the emotional ballast. The latter have an easy, conversational, folk-tinged quality, but listen to them carefully, for there are powerful emotions churning underneath the surface of each. Because Scheuer never shies away from the hard facts -- especially of his own bad behavior -- he never needs to raise his voice or over-emote. Even when giving voice to the illness that is eating away at his body, he maintains an evenness of tone that proves all the more powerful. It also helps that he is a ferociously gifted guitarist, giving expression to his feelings in some remarkable virtuoso instrumental passages.

As staged by Sean Daniels, The Lion is presented with the same simplicity with which it is written. Neil Patel's elegant set wraps the action in a curved wall covered with swatches of paint, a lovely visual metaphor for a life still in progress. Ben Stanton's infinitely sensitive lighting carefully underscores each change of mood. Leon Rothenberg's sound design is so transparent it hardly seems to exist. Scheuer is apparently quite a natty dresser in real life and Jennifer Caprio outfits him appropriately.

The Lion ends with Scheuer finally on the road to adulthood. Extending the lion metaphor in his final song, he sings, "I always show my teeth when I am smiling/I only say I love you when I'm sure/Inside my gentle paws I've got devastating claws/And I'm learning what it means to really roar." His life story exerts such a powerful effect because his songs have the undeniable roar of truth.--David Barbour