Spalding Gray is Not Missing

No matter if you like or dislike, agree or disagree with Spalding Gray remarks in his monologue about the Cambodian killing fields, you probably will remember Swimming to Cambodia. Gray's is a one man show with a one sided narrative. Gray's remarks are liberal enough to irk the patriotic but tempered with enough humor and crass reality to give serious pause to any thinking person.

Based on his small acting role in the film The Killing Fields, Gray delivers his historical, political and social interpretation of American and Southeast Asian events of the 1970s. Gray cautions in a semi-serious way, that he is mostly telling the truth. The viewer is left to make up their own mind while Gray proceeds with a mish mash of stories about sex, drugs and religion. Interspersing stories of his own obsessive compulsions and quest for the perfect moment with accounts of a brain washed, drunken sailor and mimicries of haughty actors, Gray surprises, amuses and sometimes distresses his audience. The outcome is a long story about the naivety and evil of individual and collective human nature although that may be somewhat removed from his final intent.

Is Gray portraying himself or a fictional self? So much nervous energy abounds; it is easy to be convinced Gray himself needs a "talking cure" or to be part of the movie therapy that he recommends for the inhabitants of a country that has experienced war. An elusive persona in art and in life, Gray was missing for a time after jumping from a New York City bridge. The discovery of his body, closed the mystery of his death. But, his words still remain and cause one to ponder the confused, the weak and the innocent as well as the role and responsibility of the powerful.