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The echoes of a life that reverberates around the world haunts David Cale's monologue Palomino. In this world première, which opened Friday night on the Kansas City Repertory Theatre's Copaken Stage, Cale, acting, writing and self-directing, provides a funny, at times sentimental, at times almost cinematic, ultimately indelible performance as several characters, both male and female, who find themselves connected by six degrees of separation and desires.

The stage is given over to a bare minimum of props - two fancy wooden stools, upon which Cale sits, a hat stand to leave his fedora, and behind him a large video screen which periodically flashes the names of characters or changes colors to suit the monologue's moods. Cale, dressed informally in a checked un-tucked shirt, jeans and boots, begins simply, atop one of the stools, speaking in an Irish brogue. He introduces himself as Kieran McGrath, a carriage driver in Central Park. One day, he relates, with the just the hint of a rising inflection that prepares the audience for his changing voices with each character, a woman in his cab asks him if he would be willing to accompany an older woman to a fancy dinner, "just smile," and afterward "show her a good time." The amount - in cash - that she names is too rich and the experience is too absurd not to say yes; Kieran does, and his (and our) journey begins.

Although it is initially intended as a one-nighter, Kieran's time with Vallie (short for Valerie), a wealthy woman fifteen years older than him, slowly unfolds as more than either expected. At the heart of Palomino is this strange, melodious non-love affair; late in the monologue, both Kieran and Vallie express their remorse over what they have allowed to enter into their most private inner lives. More Henry James than Hollywood, Palomino rejects the happy ending for an ending that serves more as a new beginning.

Cale takes all the roles. He drops the Colin Farrell inflection for Kieran to use different voices and mannerisms for the women, and slides on a pair of hip architect's glasses for Edward, a London book editor who appears toward the very end. And, perhaps more than most other monologists such as Anna Deveare Smith, Eric Bogosian, and the late Spalding Gray, he acts the parts. At first, it is hard to discern whether the women, Vallerie; the original woman in the cab, Marsha; and Trish, a young beautiful blond whose role is minor but integral to the piece, are being toyed with. At the opening night performance, the audience's laughter was nervous; after all, one of the main characters is not unlike many of the audience members in age and discretionary income. (It never does good to insult one's audience, unless one is really up to it, but that turns out not to be Cale's intent.) Sometimes his women do come off a bit over-the-top, throwing up their arms in despair as Cale's voice quivers a bit too falsetto. Yet, in one of the sections that vibrates with intensity, as Vallie and Kieran are making love in her place, on the floor - she explains she had never done it on the floor (and look! She sees a coffee cup under the sofa!) - Vallie's explanations ("There goes my dress! There go the magazines!") is usefully tuned to Cale's quavering upper reaches.

The polyphony becomes a true integrated voice toward the end of the 90 minute production; so immersed in his tale is Cale that the elements of the story, which might fulfill a John O'Hara short story or a chapter in Joyce, melt away as stories we have heard and read a thousand times before. If any writer might be referenced, it is Proust: just as Marcel's dipping his madeleine into the tea brings back all the memories of his life in À la Recherche du Temps Perdu, the sound of the Palomino's neighing (heard over the speakers) at the opening is signaled again at the end; this time, the impact is mournful, like church bells in the distance. In his thoroughness to grasp the complexities of what brings two people together, David Cale drops all pretenses, and, as Vallie says at one point to Kieran, it is the nakedness she wants to see.

REVIEW
The Kansas City Repertory Theatre
Palomino
Running October 9 - November 15 (Reviewed October 16, 2009)
The Copaken Stage,
14^th and Walnut, Kansas City, MO.
For tickets, call 816-235-2700 or online at www.kcrep.org.

By Steve Shapiro

Theatre Contributor (Past writer)
Steve Shapiro has been writing about the arts for over twenty-five years. He wrote and broadcast a weekly radio book review on KCUR-FM for ten years, and has contributed to NPR's Morning Edition book segment.

As a contributor to local publications such as KCMetropolis.org, KC Tribune.com, The Kansas City Star, Review, The Pitch, and Helicon 9, he has published essays and criticism on art, books, cinema, theater and the cultural Zeitgeist.

A chapter on the museum architects Frank Lloyd Wright and Steven Holl was published in the anthology, The Sixth Surface: Steven Holl Lights the Nelson-Atkins Museum (2007). On the side, he juggles Dachshunds and is available to moderate book groups.