The aptly named Confessions of a Mormon Boy, at the SoHo Playhouse, recounts Steven Fales' journey from orthodoxy to hedonism to acceptance. This tale of a religious former missionary who finds, to his horror, that he is "gender-disoriented" (i.e., homosexual) swings from poignant to harrowing. It's a familiar story that, while compelling, lacks the kind of distancing insight and character development that would give it more weight.
The strapping Fales, who wrote the 90-minute one-hander, is an engaging actor-singer with a mega-smile. It is that smile, actually, that acts as metaphor for his travails, coming and going as he recounts his failed marriage, his remunerative but sordid life as an "escort," and his eventual emergence from the darkness.
Fales tries everything to tamp down his gay feelings. His marriage to a woman whose father dies of AIDS produces two beloved children; he goes to reparative therapy, sees a clinical hypnotherapist, and finally takes some sort of course in which he finds "what it means to have integrity, to be authentic and profoundly human."
Before he can make peace with himself and, more importantly, with his father, he must emerge from the shadow of an unfeeling church that goes so far as to excommunicate him. In the evening's most shocking moment, he literally and figuratively removes an impediment to his true self.
Although Fales is charming, telling his tale with humor and stamina, he only occasionally engages us emotionally. Unlike, say, The Tricky Part, which covered similar territory, Confessions doesn't explore a life's layers so much as it details them.
Still, under Jack Hofsiss' energetic direction, the evening has a definite dramatic arc. Robert Kaplowitz's sound design, incorporating church admonitions and Fales' childhood singing, gives the piece perspective. Tim Saternow's set is spare and his lighting further enforces the juxtaposition of angelic and lurid.
Presented by MB Productions in association with Brian Malk, James Fales, Kyle Kimoto, and Carleton & Sharon Spaulding
at the SoHo Playhouse, 15 Vandam St., NYC.
Opened Feb. 5 for an open run. Mon., 7 p.m.; Wed.-Fri., 8 p.m.; Sat., 2 and 8 p.m.; Sun., 3 and 7 p.m.
(212) 691-1555.