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It seems like that's a common fear, to lose our place in the now, but the story Weems tells reminds us how rejuvenating trips down memory lane can be. Rejuvenating--and colorful, poignant, hilarious, and heart-warming--Namaste Man runs through June 22 at the Intiman (tickets: $10-$48). For a solo performer, Weems is unusually disinterested in telling you "what it all means," which we appreciated. Instead, he offers a preternaturally observant eye on his childhood experiences in the early '70s in Nepal, as the son of a U.S. State Department official.
These are not glossy postcard memories; there's an outburst of startled laughter when the Nepalese farmer proudly shows young Weems a photo of his pretty daughter--and asks if he'd like to fuck her. It's a little like if the kid in A Christmas Story was uprooted to Nepal, went to an international school, got hepatitis, hiked the Himalayas, stared wide-eyed at crushing poverty and disease, and watched his mom come unglued from cultural dislocation. Christmas caroling for Buddhists and Hindus, putting on Thanksgiving dinners for stoned backpacking hippies, and living down the street from a leper colony--you can see how it would wear on someone.
Nepal is also where he first discovered acting's thrill, but Weems wisely gives the life's-compass-setting "Ah! Theatre!" speech to an Anglo-Indian mentor, Peter Cross, who speaks with a gorgeously plummy Anglo-Indian accent and so is infinitely more credible. That's actually Weems speaking, but his gifts of mimicry are remarkable (the audience broke into helpless applause for his Billie Holiday)--not just the stop-on-a-dime impressions, but also the gleefully manic, childlike energy reminded us of Robin Williams in happier days (but not Happy Days).
Weems is not a bad writer, either; he's just poetic enough where it will do some good, and nicely flat about the emotional upsets of adults that lie beyond the understanding of kids. Direction by Bart Sher of this world premiere is, in a word, sure--nothing false or stagey, just the casual magic of opening up the stage to let the Himalayas in or shrinking it back down to the intimacy of a living room, which is always a strong point of the Intiman.
Also understated is the realization, near the end, when Weems has returned to the dreamed-about U.S.--to pizza and football and blonde girls who think Nepal might be somewhere in Europe--and finds that he doesn't belong there, either. His experiences have made him into someone who can imagine coming home, but who can't imagine having just one.
Photo: Andrew Weems in Namaste Man at Intiman Theatre, directed by Bartlett Sher. Chris Bennion © 2008.
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