Occasionally one discovers a performer who risks emotional nakedness, who sheds all inhibitions and lets it all hang out for the delight of the audience whom he dares — dangerously — to trust. Last season, that actor was Spencer Meyers, who in three very different entertainments abandoned himself to all of us spectators and so managed to corral our approving laughter. In Jobsite’s Hedwig and the Angry Inch, he was an abused, misunderstood victim of love in need of solidarity with the audience. In Stageworks’ The Divine Sister, he was silly and obscene Jeremy, the man Mother Superior left behind. And in the Jobsite/Straz Center co-production of Return to the Forbidden Planet, he was a hyper-vivid spaceship’s cook, rival to the Captain and terrifically funny. In each show, he seemed to give everything. And it worked.
This article appears in Sep 18-24, 2014.