Although Abraham Lincoln lived 300 years after Arthur Greenleaf Holmes (played by Gordon Boudreau), he still merits a mention in the poetry-themed show.
Some people, as students or adults, hear the word “poetry” and run in the other direction. They’re that intimidated, bored, puzzled or whatever by it. Gordon Boudreau obviously understands this problem, as he has condensed the history of poetry to major highlights and demonstrates just how irreverent and free-spirited one can be with verse in his solo show The Wildly Inappropriate Poetry of Arthur Greenleaf Holmes.
Boudreau created the character of Arthur Greenleaf Holmes, a busking poet of 16th-century London, for a Renaissance festival before adapting it into a stage show. He lets the audience know up front that his is “not the poetry of silk doilies and ladyfingers” but “of syphilis and hunchbacks,” not for those in Hyde Park but in Old Pye Street, the heart of a seedy district Dickens dubbed Devil’s Acre. “Are you good-natured?” Boudreau as Holmes asks as a final warning.
Arthur Greenleaf Holmes (Gordon Boudreau) hails from the English village of “Sherman-upon-Hemsley.” Photographs by Paul Siebold.
And then he proceeds into the vulgarium, as he calls it, sharing poem after poem about all matters sexual, scatological and menstrual. His first rhyme, referring to a “patron saint of the taint,” makes it clear what you’re in for. This is followed by “Mother, Will My Stones Drop?” (sample line: “Will my wanker bolden and shed its pinkish skin, and will it grow a hairy nest to spend its evenings in?”) and “Tavern Floor Tina” (“When your meat meets her mouth...”).
It’s not all elaborate/crude metaphors for genitalia and fellatio, though. Interspersed with Arthur Greenleaf Holmes’ oeuvre are discussion of key moments in poetry history—the odes of Keats and Shelley, Ezra Pound launching the Imagist movement, Whitman and free verse—and reflections on the literary form. Some of these thoughts may seem obvious if you’re the type of person who thinks about poetry on a regular basis, but for the rest of us (that is to say, most of us), they can heighten your appreciation. “Poets use language to arrive at a deeper, more elusive truth, whereas politicians and advertisers often use language to distort the truth,” Boudreau points out, a dichotomy worth considering. “The human ear has a natural affinity for poetry. As soon as children learn to speak, they begin to cobble together basic rhymes,” he offers as another insight.
Boudreau’s comments also underscore how much poetry is a part of our everyday life. “Rhymes help us remember things,” he says, citing as examples “I before E except after C” and “Beer before liquor: never sicker.” Such rhymes are so familiar, he can even tweak one in true Arthur Greenleaf Holmes fashion and assume we’ll get the reference: “Double-jointed tavern boy at night—sailor’s delight.”
Whether the actor is speaking as himself or as the character when he’s not reciting Holmes’ poems is one aspect of the show that could be refined. He talks about poets from later eras and mentions such contemporary things as quinoa salad and #MeToo, so you can just take all the anachronisms in stride and enjoy it. But with Boudreau switching between the very British, very theatrical poet reading his work and a man discussing poetry, the pacing does get thrown off a bit. It never really drags, since the play runs 75 minutes in its entirety.
Holmes (Boudreau) employs a visual aid for his “Ode to an Extremely Provocative Knothole.”
As for the titular wildly inappropriate poetry, you can admire the commitment to all-out bawdiness or you might find it gets a bit redundant. The script varies from performance to performance, in part due to audience input, but is likely to feature both the Yeats-inspired “I Built My Love a Menstrual Hut” and a woman’s retort, “From a Menstrual Hut.” Yet Boudreau’s funniest lines may be ones that are not in the poems, and not even raunchy. He talks about seeing a play called Waiting for Waiting for Godot —“I sat in the audience for three days waiting for the curtain to rise”—and wonders why it’s “cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs” rather than “paranoid schizophrenic for Cocoa Puffs” ... or “isn’t it far more likely that one would be diabetic for Cocoa Puffs?”
Costume designer MaritaBeth Caruthers has dressed Boudreau in Renaissance garb, from topper to breeches. The set, credited in the program to the Marquis de Sade, is also spot-on, entailing antique-style furniture and old-fashioned library accoutrements such as a globe, books, hourglass and goblet. A stand-up and sketch performer, Boudreau is directed by fellow comedian David Rosenberg. Clearly a passion project of Boudreau’s (and his portrayal of Holmes is impassioned), The Wildly Inappropriate Poetry of Arthur Greenleaf Holmes is a throwback to racy late-night shows that were once a staple of downtown entertainment.
The Wildly Inappropriate Poetry of Arthur Greenleaf Holmes runs through Feb. 23 at the Tank (312 W. 36th St.). Performances are 9:30 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday; no performances last two weeks of December. For tickets and more information, visit thetanknyc.org.
