By Jackie Demaline
The Cincinnati Enquirer

For our heroine Alexis, growing up in 1960s Harlem is about getting wise to drinks and drugs, what your parents can lay on you, and even what your friends can do to your heart.

It is all The Gimmick, and getting caught in it is what can happen when you don't re-invent yourself and you don't realize you have a choice.

Cincinnati Shakespeare Festival delivers a must-see in Dael Orlandersmith's autobiographical monodrama. The Gimmick may not completely be fact, but the truth rings out from it anyway.

I wish every high school-aged person could see this show, which cuts to the bone about the raw vulnerability of adolescence. It doesn't deny the pain, because that comes with the human condition. Alexis' story promises that with strength comes the capacity to find solace and survival.

The show is a terrific teaming of actor Taylore Mahogany Scott and director Rebecca Bowman, who last year demonstrated her connection to the monologue (and the work of women) with the memorable I Stand Before You Naked for New Edgecliff.

Ms. Orlandersmith (who recently scored in New York with Yellowman) is a poet of the theater, and it's a joy to see her debut in Cincinnati revived after a November run.

The first act sets up the action, as slender Ms. Scott manages to embody overweight preteen into teenaged Alexis and everyone around her. We enter her world of women without men, an alcoholic mother, the street life of Harlem (nicely brought to life by sound designer Christopher Guthrie), as Ms. Scott roams a simply set stage with a skyline backdrop.

We may not recognize Harlem, but you will recognize Alexis' tentative soul. Slowly reaching out from a too-harsh environment, she tells dual stories, of what she says and what she is saying inside, and how she blossoms in a small patch of sunlight.

Her thrilled discovery is ours when she discovers the library and a mentor in the librarian and a savior in great author James Baldwin, whose words send her out (by subway) to explore a larger world.

With her we meet Jimmy, whose eyelashes are flecked with gold paint but whose art is mostly in the colors of rage and pain - red, orange, black, blue.

If the first act is a lovely turn through the neighborhood, the second act is a powerhouse as Alexis faces betrayal - and emotionally collapses. Ms. Orlandersmith fearlessly puts the pain of that first heartbreak on the stage and Ms. Scott just as fearlessly plays it.

Alexis survives, but not without cost. Her story is a wonderfully satisfying evening of theater.

The Gimmick, through Jan. 19, Cincinnati Shakespeare Festival, 381-2273.