Nine Characters, One Performer—That’s the Challenge David Henderson Faces in The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey

Nine characters, one performer. That’s the challenge actor David Henderson and director Susannah Hough face in James Lecesne’s one-act solo show. If you recognize the names of these regional theater veterans, the artistic principals of Raleigh’s Honest Pint Theatre Co., you’re already betting they’re up for it. The Wes Anderson-meets-Raymond-Chandler tale concerns the disappearance of a gay fourteen-year-old after he changes the lives of a group of small-town Jersey shore denizens, from a barracuda of a hair stylist and her awkward teenage daughter to a mob widow and a hard-boiled detectiveall played by the same performer. Lecesne debuted the work to off-Broadway accolades after his Oscar-winning 1995 short, Trevor, spawned The Trevor Project, the country’s first national LGBTQ crisis-intervention hotline. Given the magic of Lecesne’s script, if Henderson and Hough get this regional premiere right, you should leave the theater with a clear picture of the one character that never appears.