Off-Broadway Review: CAN I BE FRANK? (Soho Playhouse)
9 / 10
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.
