A virtually unrelenting energy pulsates throughout “2 the Left,” the second offering in Aurora Theatre’s new Our Stage Onscreen series (after last month’s homespun country musical “Barbara’s Blue Kitchen”), prerecorded productions presented for streaming online. Subtitled “A Tribute to the Life of Lisa ‘Left Eye’ Lopes,” the one-woman show chronicles the unsettled life, unconventional career and untimely death of Lopes (1971-2002), who initially rose to fame as a member of the Atlanta-bred rap/R&B girl group TLC.
Written and performed by Kerisse Hutchinson, and developed here a couple of years ago under the auspices of Synchronicity Theatre’s Stripped Bare workshop program, “2 the Left” provides quite a physical workout for her. Besides primarily portraying the character’s larger-than-life personality, and a lot of the tumultuous emotions it encompassed, Hutchinson is also required (at least in fits and starts) to capture and exhibit the tireless exuberance that was typically on display in Lopes' music videos and concert appearances.
And who’s better suited to helm such a spirited show than the inexhaustible Thomas W. Jones II? While he’s probably most familiar now for his annual collaborations at Horizon over the last 15 or so years, those of us who’ve been around even longer may still remember his work as artistic director of the long-gone Jomandi back in the ’80s and early ’90s. (I’ll never forget his rare turn as an actor in a sensational solo piece called “The Wizard of Hip,” a veritable flipside of sorts to “2 the Left.”)
As a staged work, “2 to Left” is imbued with Jones' customarily flamboyant vibrancy in terms of its technical flourishes (kudos to lighting designer Andre C. Allen) and its dramatic momentum. Equally impressive, as a videotaped recreation of the play, the streaming version incorporates various photographic and editing “effects” (double-exposure and dissolve shots, montage sequences, etc.). The action onstage moves and flows, but it isn’t simply a matter of setting in place a stationary camera to record it all.
“2 the Left” is rightly described as a play with music, as opposed to a greatest-hits jukebox revue. (S. Renee Clark serves as the show’s musical director.) The music is fairly constant and decidedly booming, although it’s mainly incidental to the story; there are no full-blown production numbers of Top 10 songs like “U Know What’s Up” or “Not Tonight,” so much as a smattering of isolated lyrics or refrains here and there.
Hutchinson’s performance as Lopes is squarely in-your-face, but a lot of character development and biographical details in her script remain rather sketchy and by-the-numbers. She skims through the meteoric rise of TLC in the early 1990s and some of the “creative differences” that led to Lopes leaving the group to pursue a solo career later in the decade. As she professes, “I’m a Diana Ross, not a Supreme.”
Her attitudes and philosophies about life, in general, are presented in a series of recurring “Left Eyeisms” that are intermittently projected onstage and superimposed on-screen during the show. “It’s never too late to lose who you are and choose who you’re supposed to become.” Another one: “Every time there’s a struggle, it’s nothing but preparation for what’s yet to come.”
The most interesting passages involve her personal relationships with three men from outside the music industry: her volatile father, Ronald, an abusive alcoholic who enabled her own drinking problems as a teenager; her tempestuous love affair with Atlanta Falcon Andre Rison, whose mansion she was convicted of setting ablaze in 1994; and a “spiritualist healer” named Dr. Sebi, whose counsel prompted a sojourn to Honduras (where Lopes died in a car crash).
“I’m not here to change what people think of me,” she observes to the audience late in the play. “I’m here to change what they think of themselves.” “2 the Left” may not entirely succeed on that score, but there’s no denying the breathless tenacity with which it tries.
THEATER REVIEW
“2 the Left”
Available for streaming on Vimeo on Demand through Nov. 8. $30 per view. 678-226-6222. auroratheatre.com.
Bottom line: As loud and flashy as the woman it chronicles.
