Mocking The Ethnic Beast

By Guy Garcia

Preening for the camera in a white suit and Panama hat, an unctuous TV talk- show host named Agamemnon tries to prove his credentials as a Latin Lothario by reading letters from female viewers inviting him to "invade me, blockade me, dictate me." An amber-skinned transvestite named Manny the Fanny gyrates to a dance-club hit while recalling her Krazy Glue revenge on an unfaithful boyfriend. A punchy Peruvian ex-boxer, pressed to name a famous Hispanic, searches the blank canvas of his mind. "William Shakesperez," he intones. "He wrote Macho Do About Nothing and The Merchant of Venezuela."

All these cutting Hispanic stereotypes are the inventions of a writer- comedian-actor who is, perhaps surprisingly, Hispanic himself. They are characters in the play Mambo Mouth, a one-man tour de force created and performed by Colombian-born John Leguizamo, 27. Kaleidoscopic, hilarious and politically very incorrect, Mambo Mouth had a successful 35-week run off- Broadway earlier this year and won a 1991 Obie and Outer Critics Circle Award. Now a one-hour TV special based on the show will get the first of six airings on HBO this Saturday.

The seven sketches in Mambo Mouth (Leguizamo makes the transition from one to another by frenetically changing costumes behind a backlit scrim while loudspeakers pump out a salsa beat) grew from improvisations that Leguizamo based on his family and friends and on images culled from TV and films. "I drew on everything that was around me and put it together," he says. "I can only write something that touches me and amuses me, that I feel something about."

The material is a little too close to home for many Hispanics, who charge that Mambo Mouth perpetuates negative, sexist stereotypes. A female columnist in the Village Voice accused Leguizamo of promoting "refried machismo" and "woman bashing." The actor rejects the charge. "To some Latin people, we're not allowed to mock ourselves," he says. "I'm supposed to be doing the Bill Cosby-Brady Bunch syndrome." Leguizamo acknowledges, however, that his unflinching portrayals of Latin lowlifes, louts and losers can trigger a painful catharsis. "Latin culture is very subliminal. There's still a lot of self-hate. It's underneath this mat and rug hidden in the basement, and it's the beast that wants to come out and chop our heads off. I'm letting out a lot of monsters."

Leguizamo is, in fact, part of a wave of young minority comedians who use laughter to lampoon ethnic and other stereotypes, often at the risk of offending fellow minorities. Damon and Keenen Ivory Wayans have widened the parameters of black humor on their TV show In Living Color, enacting such caricatures as dogmatic homeboys, bums and effeminate book reviewers. Stand-up comedian Tamayo Otsuki revs up her act by portraying the Japanese as greedy moneybags who discipline their children by evoking memories of the atom bomb. ) Such humor, argues Leguizamo, is an "exorcism" rooted in the liberating power of self-recognition.

In his sketch called "Crossover King," for example, Leguizamo satirizes Hispanics' desire to be accepted into the mainstream by playing a Latin who transforms himself into a pseudo-samurai businessman. Eyes squinting behind thick spectacles, Leguizamo lectures members of an imaginary Hispanic audience on how they too "can be Latino-free" if they just work hard enough at being Japanese. "Our computer graphics project that after only six years in the crossover program, Tito could become Toshino," he explains, "the quiet, well-dressed, manicured, well-groomed, somewhat anal-retentive overachiever who is ready to enter the job market at the drop of a dollar." The sketch takes a slapstick twist when the Crossover King, suffering a relapse into his Latin self, suddenly starts dancing and shouting Spanish phrases.

Born in Bogota and raised in a working-class section of Queens, N.Y., Leguizamo discovered early that his talents could buy him protection from the streetwise youths who ruled the neighborhood. "They used to let me hang out with them because I would make them laugh," he recalls. After studying drama at New York University, Leguizamo landed some supporting roles on TV's Miami Vice and soon moved on to movies. In Hollywood he has alternated between playing mama's boys (Casualties of War, Hangin' with the Homeboys) and baby- faced killers (Die Hard II, Regarding Henry).

Although his movie career is taking off, Leguizamo is not about to stop ruffling ethnic sensitivities with his comedy. He is hard at work on a follow- up to Mambo Mouth, a one-man show in which he will play six members of a half-Dominican, half-Colombian family who are attending a wedding. "I think it could be controversial," he says with an innocent smile. Its title: Spic- o-rama

With reporting by Patrick E. Cole/Los Angeles