STAGE REVIEW : Humor and Compassion in Message of ‘One Voice’

Cabaret performer Alan Nicholson walks on stage in a gaucho dress jacket and opens his show with a song called “Are You Ready?” But nobody could be.

Those who jammed the Coronet Theatre for the opening of Nicholson’s one-man production, “One Voice,” knew of Nicholson’s personal battle. But hearing him jump right into it with the kind of mockery one might reserve for the gout still comes as a shock--and welcome relief.

Rather incredibly, the star puts a shine on the tone of the evening Monday with these words: “When I heard I had AIDS, my first reaction was . . . arrrrgghh! I first learned about it on my birthday, July 18, 1988. I had to check into the County-USC Medical Center. That’s where you go when you don’t have any insurance. It’s for indigents.”

A little music, maestro. And Nicholson sashays into a fanciful ditty called “Funeral Tango” by Jacques Brel. Later he uncorks his version of an AIDS television commercial: “Hi. AIDS got you down?”

Nicholson is not the first performer to deal humorously with a personal scourge. But he may be the first person with AIDS to turn the alphabet soup--HIV, ARC, AZT--into a tuneful entertainment.

For the record, Nicholson looks good. This is not a dreary or sentimental event. This is a man who refuses to knuckle under because he was dealt a bad hand. At the end of the two-act show, he ad libs, “I wanted to get out of therapy and put (the therapy) into a show.”

His running chatter is not as smooth as it could be, although his star impersonations, especially a lily-festooned Katharine Hepburn, are choice. He barely negotiates a satiric, black humor routine (from the dripping pen of comedy writer Bruce Vilanch) about prescribed rules of etiquette at an AIDS memorial service. But what salvages his performance is his affecting self-consciousness. Why shouldn’t he be a little nervous? In a show like this, you couldn’t cope with Mr. Slick.

Of course, there’s palpable compassion in some of the music. Rear scrim projections of patches from the National AIDS Quilt display blow-ups names of AIDS victims. These are wrenchingly accompanied by Nicholson’s personal vocal, “Remember Their Names” (written with on-stage, unobtrusive keyboardist Michael Orland).

Nicholson’s strong suit is belting out the rousing “The God Why Don’t You Love Me Blues” (Sondheim) and “Shakin’ the Blues Away” (Berlin).

The title song, “One Voice” (Manilow), and most of the production’s material and technical values were a collaborative donation by people in the entertainment community to celebrate the power of living and performing with acquired immune deficiency syndrome. The director is Sally Fisher.

The audience was predominantly white and male. That is the lamentable truism about gay theater.

But as Nicholson noted for the rest of the world out there, “It’s unreasonable to think this crisis can’t touch you.” And he then sharply catalogued the ignorance: “AIDS is illegal in Texas, in Cuba they quarantine AIDS patients--and forget about going to Japan!”

A portion of the show’s proceeds will benefit five Los Angeles-based AIDS organizations.

At 366 N. La Cienega Blvd., Mondays only, 8 p.m., through July 10. Tickets: $15. (213) 659-2400 and (213) 642-4242.