But Kelly’s attention-must-be-paid energy assembles all these balky elements into a little hymn of devotion-and, like Steward’s own inky work, “Skin” leaves its mark. Steward was an academic and a tattoo artist, a friend of Gertrude Stein’s who had trysts with Rudolph Valentino and Thornton Wilder, and such a meticulous documentarian of his own sex life that his extensive records, which included a detailed Stud File, were catnip to a certain Alfred C. Kelly reserves his extraordinary tenor for one beautiful song at the end, and his performance does need a bit more of that particular magic, since his gifts do not include making Steward’s lectures, delivered verbatim, sing. If I add the alleged Steward-Valentino encounter to this article, will it just be deleted or straight-washed - Anon. Steward died in poverty, leaving 80 boxes of letters, photographs, sexual paraphernalia, manuscripts, and a reliquary containing one of Rudolph Valentino’s pubic hairs. Steward-friend or lover to great figures like Gertrude Stein, Thornton Wilder, even (perhaps) Rudolph Valentino-led a startling life, first as an academic who kept a “stud file” of his many sexual connections, then as a tattoo artist, and, finally, as a writer, of both queer studies and seminal hot-cop erotica. If this is your first John Kelly production, you might need a period of adjustment: his old-school downtown dreamwalk through the life of the poet Samuel Steward drifts rather than marches, and a sexual explicitness (when an orgy is called for, you see an orgy) punctuates this misty, even sleepy experience. Samuel Steward did not have sex with Rudolph Valentino.
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