Lies My Parents Told Me

[Amaryllis]

Review by: Hope Baugh

Tony McDonald’s multi-media theatre piece, “Lies My Parents Told Me,” is part rant, part revelation, and part scrapbooking. Ultimately, the rough-and-raw mix is endearing in its honesty. I left the theatre feeling as if I understood a little more about a respected local playwright and a little more about my species as a whole.

The piece is also artistically interesting. With the help of director and designer Michael Shelton, and other designers Brian Hartz (sound), Bryan Fonseca (lighting and set), and Jon Lindley (lighting), Tony uses numerous visual and aural bits and pieces to enrich his autobiographical monologue. Some bits are more distracting than helpful, but others are true enhancements.

The PowerPoint photo of the full AIDS quilt from Tony’s visit to Washington, DC is breathtaking, for example. It could never have been adequately described with words alone.

I also loved getting to see the various family photos and the photos of his first love and his first fiancée. The visuals of his first crush as Tony began to realize he was gay are hilarious. Several political pictures are worth at least a thousand words each.

Many of the sound choices are clever and fun, too. I laughed out loud when I heard Jewel Akens singing “Let me tell ya ‘bout the birds and the bees…” as Tony began to describe his father giving him “The Talk.” At the end of the show I heard a rap song that I had never heard before but which I immediately loved for its appropriateness for this show. The lyrics include “I don’t need your permission to love, I don’t need your permission to f*ck.” A quick Internet search credits this song to someone named Kendall.

However, the most powerful moments in Tony’s show are when he embellishes his story using only his voice, face, and body under a well-placed spotlight. I stopped breathing as Tony shared what had happened to him when the U. S. Navy found out he was gay. So, it is probably a good thing that the whole show is not staged this way, but I loved the strength and intimacy of those “bare” moments in the piece.

Several of the individual lines struck me as particularly well-crafted, too. For example, I loved the line about the parents who paint “mental Monets” in an attempt to protect their children from the harsh realities of life. I also loved the line about how falling in love can happen in a moment of realization about a person's character and his love for art. It didn't matter if Tony was talking about the same man that I, too, love in this pure way, although I later found out that he was. I just appreciated that Tony was able to express it for me.

There is a lot going on in this play, including some probably unintended irony. Tony rants about judgmental Christians who should know better because their Bible says “Judge not, lest ye also be judged.” As a Christian, I struggle with this myself, so I didn’t mind this particular rant. However, I had to smile when Tony was as judgmental as a Christian when it came to issues he cared about. I passed the test for awareness of Ryan White and the AIDS quilt, thank goodness, but I bet Tony would have thrown me out of the theatre if he had known how surprised I was by the visual of a giant equal sign. I had known about the debate over the legality of same-sex marriages, of course, but last night was the first I had heard that a giant equal sign was a symbol in support of it.

When I left the theatre, I thought that the surprising and brilliantly funny ending was what had pulled the complex piece together for me. However, now that I have had some time to think about it, the real glue is a line that comes a little bit before the end.

Tony grabs his head in frustration and says, “I’m tired of not having faith!”

I sympathize with his lack of faith in political leaders, but I love that his play shows that Tony actually has developed quite a lot of faith: in himself, in his friends, in his partner, in his community, in the delicious unpredictability of live theatre, and in the possibility of God as evident in nature, art, and supposed coincidences. I love that Tony gives his parents some credit for helping him develop this faith.

Threaded throughout Tony’s charting of his journey from the personal to the political to the communal, and his journey from child to man to human, is the growing realization that his parents, like all parents, were doing the best they could, given what they knew at the time.

This is what gives universal relevance to Tony McDonald’s very personal one-man show.

“Lies My Parents Told Me” runs Fridays and Saturdays through September 22 at The Alley Theater in Indianapolis.