It's a Slippery Slope

By HOWARD WAXMAN

A Lincoln Center Theater presentation of a play in one act written and performed by Spalding Gray. Creative consultant, Paul Spencer; production manager, Jeff Hamlin. Lincoln Center Theater directors, Andre Bishop & Bernard Gersten. Opened Nov. 10, 1996, at the Vivian Beaumont Theater. Reviewed Nov. 4; 1,036 seats; $ 35 top. Running time: 1 HOUR, 30 MIN.
 

Spalding Gray's latest monologue, "It's a Slippery Slope," maintains the standards he established in previous works including "Swimming to Cambodia," "Monster in a Box" and "Gray's Anatomy." But in addition to demonstrating the same crazy humor as those pieces, "Slippery Slope" brings a new depth of feeling to important events in the author's life.

The show (performed only on Sundays and Mondays) has much of the same format Gray used in previous performances, including the big bare desk, the clutch of note pages, and the familiar L.L. Bean garb. But when he rolls up his sleeves to begin work in this new monologue, Gray undergoes something of a sea change (actually, a ski change), announcing the end of one period in his life and the beginning of another.

Usually anxious and not athletically inclined, Gray reports on his whim to give skiing a try and the unexpected result of his becoming hooked on skis. The combination of snow and mountains has put him in touch with his WASP-ish New England roots, opening the door to changes of even greater significance.

As he describes it, in his ever-wonderful foggy voice, Gray seems to have taken to skis like a duck to water. He becomes enthralled with the sport and envisions himself skiing across America, planning a tour of his performances that will allow him to visit slope after slope from coast to coast. In one particular moment of glory he considers becoming a ski instructor and retiring the monologues.

Fortunately, he has not yet taken such a leap. Despite his new identity as a jock, Gray manages to elicit many good laughs out of the spills he takes along his learning curve (richly demonstrated without rising from his chair), as well as from his encounters with odd and ordinary ski folk (several of whom are the subject of his deft mimicry). One of the biggest laughs comes when, after a touching description of his first and last moment of bonding with his late father, he offers the absurdly less-than-happy reaction of his stepmother to this same story.

His father's death is only one of the recent events in Gray's life revealed in this piece. Others include the ending of the longterm relationship that had been a major subject of his previous monologues, and the beginning of a new relationship quite different from the old one.

Gray places these changes and others in the context of having reached the age at which his mother committed suicide. In passing that milestone, he seems to have found release from bonds that made him the endearing character whose antics have generated so much of the humor in his work.