Great Men of Genius:
Daisey's facility for bringing such disparate-seeming threads together is astonishing. In addition to his quicksilver extemporizing (he has notes, which he never looks at, on the table in front of him), he commandingly takes the audience down many separate roads without once losing their confidence. Even if it looks like he doesn't know where he's going, the viewer never doubts for a moment that he does. That's how totally in control he is. Plus, he's a gifted raconteur: he's so damn funny and personable (one feels as if they're having their own private audience with him) it's impossible not to be riveted. And when he closes the evening by stating that it's "difficult and challenging to live without shame," he movingly and magically ties everything together with the utterance of a single sentence.
By the time this review goes up, Daisey will be readying the second installment of Great Men of Genius, which focuses on Bertolt Brecht. Subsequent weeks will bring evenings about Nikola Tesla and L. Ron Hubbard. Whichever one of these you catch, I urge you to go see Daisey in action. His performances are as inspiring as they are mysterious: you don't know how he does it, but you can't stop watching.
2:58 PM
Dilettante Archives