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- November 14, 2009 19:30pm
Spike Lee Presents: County of Kings Starring Lemon!
by Shanelle Gabriel
It started with a dance. A dance between spoken word and the flow of Hip Hop, and Lemon Andersen blends the two with a theatrical flair in his play “County of Kings.” Produced by Spike Lee and directed by Elise Thoron, Lemon’s one-man show tells of his personal struggle to understand and appreciate his present-day accomplishments through his gritty, complex past. How did a kid who learned life lessons in the “Courtyard” of a housing project in Brooklyn and later learns some lessons in the courtyard of a prison, pave a path to the TONY Awards stage? Lemon Anderson reveals this at the Public Theater in NYC.
In one of the first scenes, Lemon transports us to Coney Island, Brooklyn. He presents lively images of his mother, Millie, long before her battle with drug addiction and AIDS, a woman proud of her son’s natural ability to move to the music blasting by the boardwalk. The story continues with an overwhelming sense of nostalgia to any child of the city. He speaks of clothing trends, Hip Hop, graffiti art, headlines, and the formative years that shaped his identity and values. Using a very simple stage setting (two pillars, a dark blue backdrop, and parallel brick walls) and varied lighting by Jane Cox and Lily Fossner, Lemon’s words graciously paint the scenes in our minds. As we follow him, we join him in his growth from a young man, a motherless son, a drug dealer, and a Riker’s Island/Ohio County inmate, into the amazing artist and the man we know today. Lemon’s best illustrations came from the portrayal of characters that greatly contrasted him, like his finger-snapping, eye-rolling, around-the-way ex-girlfriend Lily whose love wasn’t able to keep him out of the streets.
Lemon Andersen presents himself with purity and sincerity that is almost child-like. As the son of a Puerto Rican mother and a Norwegian-American father, he frequently flips accents, forcing the audience to recall any ‘Spanglish’ known or to simply laugh at the memory’s underlying tone. His accounts are speckled with life’s natural comedy and the same self-examination many of us go through with age. “County of Kings” is an account of lost parents, gained friends, lost innocence, gained status, lost opportunities, gained responsibility, and gained purpose. It ends with that warm memory of his mother on that Coney Island day. Lemon states with certainty that in heaven his mother is as proud of him for moving people with his words as she was on that day he moved to the music. Through the moving play “County of Kings,” we behold his struggle to find deliverance, and we join Millie in her whisper and say, “That’s my boy.”
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