After completing his opus poetry collection Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman wrote a self-help book, Manly Health and Training. It’s a juxtaposition that performer Jimmy Grzelak mines hilariously in a one-man show of absurd inspirational lines, off-beat humor, and weird electro ditties.
Grzelak costume sets the stage: short shorts, crop top, and ankle sneaks hug his slender frame as he takes us through a day of successful thinking. He paraphrases Whitman’s exhortations and sends up self-help cliches with straight-faced charm. But his humor has an edge too: he tells us to use those things which keep us up (fear, money problems, etc) to wake us up. We wake up, we shower, we shit, we wank, we’re still not satisfied. Gzelak finds the poetry and the absurd in the mundane.
[The Adrienne, 2030 Sansom Street] September 6-8, 2018; fringearts.com/event/song-of-my-self-care