Julio Torres in Color theories.
Photo: Emilio Madrid
We’re reaching Peak solo show-or sort-solo show-in the late-covid wind. Strapped for Resources and Now Actively revised and threatened By their Government, Theaters and Producers are Pouuncing on Opportunities to Lay Out a Little Money or Spect on One Big Name in the Hopes of Clawing Way of the Red. It is my sense that audiences are on to say, and the taste for stages bereft of bodies is already on the wane. But as with all forms, there are high and lows of the genre and, before you swear off the solo act, you should see julio torres’s irresistible new one with its pop-up and a bossy little Named Bibo.
Known for Los Espookys, Fantastic, and Problem (Along with some of Snl ‘S funnier and kookier bits of past few years), Torres Feels – Kind of Like Cole Escola and Chris Fleming – Like a Cause for Hope in Our Mostly Terrorizing Present. Young (Enough), Queer, Hilarious, and, Most Important, Legit weirdHe’s a Writer-Performer who’s messing around with the stand-up form, treated comedy like Paintball and More Like Silly Putty. He is also have the Kind of sui generis brain you want to take a trippy vacation in, like alice down the rabbit hole or, if you are happy with me, Donald in Mathmagic Land.
In His HBO Special, My Favorite ShapesTorres at a futuristic conveyor belt guide audiences Through a parade of beatings objets that are gioven Curiouser new dimensions through his blend of absurdis, Kidlike make Believe, and, as my colleague kathryn vanarendonk pointed, genrendonk. Defamiliarization. Color theories is a natural successor, constructing a charmingly surreal container in which torres can to us about his taks on various colors. He Pages Through a Notebook, checking off different hues as he goes (Bibo Hurries Him along to the next one if he goes off on a tangent, which is always). He Also Begins With a Straight-Faced Disclaimer: “We’re not gonna get to every Color.”
Unfolding on a literal giant storybook of a set, with an aesthetic somewhere between dalí and The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Color theories is a Complete Charmer, Witty and Whimsical in Equal Measure. Torres has a gift for extended, eccentric metaphor-the Kind of Juxtaposions that make you snort-laugh they’re’re simultaneously so bizarre and so apt. The fact that barbor streisand keeps cloning her dog and then taking the clones to the women of “the source” is “Very Purple Behavior. ” Purple, you see, “Is intrigue. Purple is Mystery… lilac is being a mom. Purple is being a steppemom. ” Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is Orange, Because Orange is “The Midpoint Between Childlika Wonder and Rage,” and “We Love Our Male Celebrities to be orange that means they’re exciting but not threatetening.” (Who Else is Orange? All Those Cheeky Animated Disney Boys from the ’90s: “Simba, Aladdin … Why Are they Kind of Sexy? Of is “a funeral hug” an uppercase R “Has the elegant arrogance of the villain from Titanic. The Human, Not the Iceberg. ”
Torres May Doodle All Over the Set and Tickle US With Throwway Bits Like Reference to the Flathion As “The Eataly District,” But there’s Also A Trenchant Throne in Color theories that has to do with abuses of autoritity in a World Run by Violent Bureucracies. These are the are-accorting to torres’s theories-navy blue, and the thread of that color’s opspresses manifestations lurks in the show like an under-the-bond monster wearing a topeee and a bad suit. (There is, come to think of it, an Amazing anecdote about a toupee.) JUST WAIT TILL TORRES ABSTRACT Illustrations of “Rich People Doing Their Taxes” or “A War Crime” in Oil Pastel, or Till and Diagnosis the US AS A County. Under The “Beige Mask” of “Pixar Acting” and Novelty Candles. “I don’t mind sentimentality and childlik innocence. What i mind is it being sold to me by navy blue.” Zing. Synesthesia has never been funnier.
Color theories is at performance Space New York Through October 5.