Can I Be Frank? Off-Broadway Reviews

Bassichis delivers an evening of highbrow comedy that won’t soon be lost to the archives. Maya refused to apologize or equivocate about his life and identity, and Bassichis refuses to apologize about using Maya’s persona as a vehicle for fame.

Is Can I Be Frank? derivative? Perhaps. But it’s also an ingenious way to pay homage to an underappreciated artist.

It is vital for younger generations to realize that one significant reason our present culture is so nasty and decadent is due to the untimely loss to AIDS of multitudes of arts-makers they never knew existed, like Frank Maya, and this show is a good reminder.

There is a windup of rightous outrage that is meant to lead us from honoring a history of men lost too soon to AIDS to connect to a rage we should feel about our government today. These are generation defining moments, but the show does not build towards this. Instead, there is more of a sudden catapult of political ideas that just get launched towards us at the end. Rage about AIDS, our government, and the violence all around us. It wants to be a meaningful call to action, but how did we get here?

Morgan resurrects Maya’s voice with both reverence and playfulness. He performs Frank’s controversial Liberace rant, and later a monologue about dating called “The First Time You Go Home With Someone.” He sings three of Maya’s songs: “Polaroid Children,” “Boxes of You,” and “Mourning and Militancy,” and he also recreates signature Maya bits: an audience Q&A (for which Morgan provides pre-written questions), “Letters from Dead People” (featuring a note from Lucille Ball), and — most astonishingly — a letter from Frank himself, written to Morgan! Okay, even if it’s not true, the moment is funny, absurd, and yet moving all at once.