Laurence Fishburne in his one-man show, Like They Do in the Movies, directed by Leonard Foglia.
Laurence Fishburne’s one-man show, Like They Do in the Movies, arrives at the Perelman Performing Arts Center like a breath of fresh air. Written and performed by Fishburne, and directed by Leonard Foglia, it is a deeply personal performance that is immensely entertaining.
Entering in a flowing black caftan, Fishburne strides onto the stage, his 6-foot, 3-inch frame creating an elegant silhouette on an almost bare stage. The only props on Neil Patel’s minimalist set, in fact, are a portable table, two chairs, and knitting needles. A large rectangular screen is on the back wall, where images, photographs, and locales will be projected, enhancing Fishburne’s performance without being a distraction.
Fishburne immediately gets down to business, confiding to the audience that the stories he will share will vary in their veracity: “Some are true; some pure fiction, and some are a mix of both.” Or as he aptly describes it in its online ad: “It is the stories and lies people have told me. And that I have told myself.”
Actor-playwright Fishburne performs in the world-premiere of his solo play, Like They Do in the Movies, at the Perelman Performing Arts Center. Photographs by Joan Marcus.
He launches his play with a set piece on his mother, Hattie Bell Crawford. He explains that when he was a young child, she operated a charm school in their living room, replete with full-length mirrors on the walls. Although she would later become a schoolteacher, Fishburne unabashedly refers to her as his “stage mother” because she first urged him as a child to audition for the school production of Peter Pan. A believer in the value of hard work, she sent him to his room with the script and told him not to leave before he had memorized all the parts. Indeed, Fishburne tells the audience, he diligently followed his mother’s advice—and he landed a part in the production.
Fishburne smoothly transitions from talking about his stage debut in Peter Pan to telling the audience about performing at age 12 in his first feature film, a coming-of-age drama called Cornbread, Earl and Me. Theatergoers may well imagine at this point that Fishburne is about to regale them with backstage stories on his blockbuster film series The Matrix or playing Ike Turner in What’s Love Got to Do With It. But the actor surprisingly steers clear of his silver screen adventures. Rather, he recounts more homespun—and darker—tales about his mother Hattie, including how she was diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder and sexually abused him. When Fishburne mentions his sexual abuse, he quietly remarks: “It would take 29 years for those memories to surface.”
Fishburne readily admits that his relationship with his father, Laurence Fishburne Jr., a corrections officer known as “Big Fish,” was a distant one. His father took prisoners from jail to the courtroom and then back to their cell. Following his parents’ divorce when he was a child, he would only see his father once a month. But on those visits his father introduced him to film classics, something that fueled his imagination and provided him with a rich background in film.
Fishburne’s expression is extremely guarded as he speaks about his relationship with his father, but it suddenly softens as he shares with the audience perhaps his last memory of him. It was in 2008, and his father had come to see his son perform at the Broadway opening of his one-man play Thurgood, even though he was suffering from diabetes and would die only weeks later.
“The actor surprisingly steers clear of his silver screen adventures. Rather, he recounts more homespun—and darker—tales.”
Like They Do in the Movies is balanced with vignettes about Fishburne’s family members and character studies of friends and locals who have somehow made an imprint on the 62-year-old actor-playwright. Consider Fishburne’s recounting of the gutsiness of an OB/GYN nurse, plus her stranded husband, who remained at a New Orleans hospital during the height of Hurricane Katrina, delivering three babies from Sunday through Wednesday while dealing with a dwindling water supply, eating fruit cocktail ad nauseam, and constantly confronting death. While Fishburne’s vivid descriptions of the floodwaters rising in the hospital’s lower floors can send chills down your spine, it’s his impersonation of the husband who sighted Air Force One flying overhead and his naïve belief that President George W. Bush was heading a rescue effort for the hospital that may bring one to tears.
As a raconteur, Fishburne follows in the footsteps of monologuists Whoopi Goldberg, John Leguizamo, and Anna Deavere Smith (all three are given a “special thanks” in the program). That said, Fishburne puts his own stamp on the form by embodying his loved ones through his own personal lens.
Foglia, who previously directed Fishburne in Thurgood, simply trusts in Fishburne’s innate charisma and the integrity of his script—and lets the theatrical magic happen. And it does. Fishburne has created riveting theater with his portraits of family members and friends, warts and all.
Playwright: Laurence Fishburne
Director: Leonard Foglia
Sets: Neil Patel
Lighting: Tyler Micoleau
Costumes: Vernon Ross
Sound: Justin Ellington
Projections: Elaine J. McCarthy
