East 10th Street: Self Portrait With Empty House

Brought to the UK by the multi award-winning Richard Jordan Productions, East 10th Street is the autobiographical piece from the former poster-boy of New York theatre’s avant-garde scene. Describing a cast of characters and a setting that is reminiscent of Augusten Burroughs’ equally eccentric memoir Running with Scissors, Edgar Oliver paints an image of a New York in which people living in close quarters for years are nevertheless haunted by loneliness, constricted by their own social awkwardness.

While some audiences may initially find the playwright and performer’s delivery style off-putting—the grandiose gestures and wildly dramatic voice can seem annoyingly luvvie—anyone who is aware that this is the real Oliver, neither fictional nor embellished for theatrical purposes, will quickly warm to his engaging account, which manages to move seamlessly between grotesquery and light-heartededness. It’s unsurprising that Oliver and his sister Helen were raised by a bohemian mother yet the fact that he hails from Georgia is indiscernible when listening to his famously bizarre accent. Though attempting to follow what sounds like a slightly camp Vincent Price takes some getting used to, it’s this very oddity that has endeared Oliver to off-Broadway theatre-goers for so long.

Incidentally, the word “truly” pops up repeatedly in Oliver’s monologues, a necessary reminder to the audience that the wild characters he describes – the midget cabalist, the ancient crone dwelling in “a nest of rags” – really did exist in the lumbering old property that he remains in to this day, although now he is left only with the memories.