Who killed my father (3*)

Publishing two well-received novels just didn't provide Edouard Louis with enough ego gratification if his greed for applause at St. Ann's Warehouse is any indication.  I read and admired The End of Eddy, his autobiographical account of growing up gay in a working class household in rural France.  Homosexuality was his ticket out of an environment not so different from red state America, and his anguished adolescence resonated as it did again in the theater.  He sits onstage, behind a desk, pecking at his computer while the audience enters.  Except for one crucial segment, Louis performs in French with supertitles projected on a screen behind him along with endless video of the highway that took him to university and fame in Paris.  

Much of the story will be familiar to anyone who has read his novels and I found his wounded recitation more than little dull until he moved to a microphone at the front of the stage and began lip synching to several songs of his youth beginning with Britney Spears and culminating with Celine Dion in what was for me the most moving part of the show by far. I've always loved the cheesiness of "My Heart Will Go On" and Louis uses it to devastating effect when he begins singing it to son père--represented by a piece of fabric in an empty arm chair (because this is avant-garde theater, after all!)--who gave his sissy son the Titanic VHS tape for his birthday against his better (toxically masculine) judgment.  Moments earlier I had concluded that he really, really loved his father so my tears came faster than the ill-fated ship took on water.  

Unfortunately, Louis switches back into French and swerves in another direction, pointing his finger at every French politicians since Jacques Chirac for chipping away at the unemployment and health care benefits that sustained his father after a crippling factory accident.  While this indictment is staged very well, it reminded me of Act Up 's obsession with blaming Mayor Koch and President Reagan for HIV deaths.  Yes, anger is an energy but there are more productive outlets, like protecting yourself and others from transmission or advocating for improved workplace conditions, volunteering to help people and writing powerful novels.  Those kinds of efforts don't get you three curtain calls, including one that was completely unwarranted.  Louis needs as much attention from an audience as he did from his homophobic father who I subsequently learned isn't dead at all.  Weird.