"Palomino": Theater Review

Starring in his one-man show, which he also wrote and directed, David Cale hardly looks the part of the character he's portraying — that of Kieran McGrath, a hot young Irish carriage driver in New York's Central Park, whose looks and charms are so irresistible, he becomes an accidental gigolo to upper-crust society women. Like the horse that bears the show's name, Palomino clips along at a steady pace, with only the occasional lull or veering off course, and the writing itself is quite touching, impassioned without seeming saccharine, and with stark snippets of the lonely and shattered that remind us to, as Robert Herrick once wrote, "make much of time." Cale plays seven characters of varying accents, genders, and sexual orientations with varying degrees of success. The females were hard to differentiate, as they all seemed to suffer from the same overwhelming urge to pee and didn't walk so much as flop about the stage. The most engaging character, Kieran's gay publisher Edward, unfortunately comes as the show is near its finish line, but it's almost worthwhile to hold out for his tale, whose narrative proves to be the most endearing.