Review - The Lion

Last year, a number of friends saw the new one-person musical The Lion at Manhattan Theatre Club and they suggested I see it.  As sometimes happens, there just wasn't enough time in my theater-going life and I missed it.  I was happy to see that the show is being revived downtown at the small Lynn Redgrave Theater, so when tickets popped up on TDF, I finally made my way there.

I'm actually a fan of one-person autobiographical shows, I generally enjoy the very personal reveal of lives that can lead to insights about my own life, or at least seem universal while still being specific.  I really enjoyed The Lion too and am ever so glad I saw it.  Starring a charismatic and extremely charming Benjamin Scheuer, the 70-minute musical is a sweet, bare bones production that tells the story of a young man who inherits his love of music from a difficult father - how Ben reconciles the conflicts with his father, learns to respect the flaws in himself and the people he loves, and deals with other crises in his life is told mainly through song.  The songs have a folk-tinge and are truly stories set to music.  I found most of the song lyrics to be fantastic, with many surprises contained within.

photo credit: Matthew Murphy

Scheuer is a compelling storyteller; he's just so innately likeable and sincere that you're drawn in immediately.  He has a sweet smile and ingratiating style of communicating that I found very appealing.  The stage is very bare, with guitars set up around everywhere.  As the stories spin, a different guitar is used to tell different stories at different times of Scheuer's life.  Each guitar had a sound that helped fill out the expression of the music - as a non-musician, I found that very interesting.  As a person who has also used love of the arts to get through tough times, I related  to many of the feelings he expressed of pulling back into the art instead of reaching out to the people.

The individual songs were terrific and I can certainly see kids using these songs as audition pieces for years to come.  I especially love the song he wrote for his first serious girlfriend, "Laugh."  The song started one way, went somewhere else (with seriously funny lyrics) and ended up in someplace else.  I thought it was very smart without being overly calculating in the writing.  I also appreciated his use of reprise and how the songs meant something totally different when performed the second time.

Scheuer also has a great rapport with the audience, though I also found it interesting that when one audience member decided to leave before the end of the show, Scheuer kept going, but watched the person the entire way out the door - he was acknowledging, yet not acknowledging, that person's rejection of the story.  I guess that's one way to deal with walkouts when you're revealing so much intimate material about yourself.

It takes a lot of balls to tell such a personal story, and not be shameless or manipulative or smarmy about it, so I take my hat off to Benjamin Scheuer.  He's put together a very moving evening of theater out of the sadness (and joy) of his life - he is definitely a talent I'll be keeping my eye on moving forward.