"Ghetto Superstar" at Joe's Pub

If you enjoy stage performances and ever wondered, as you were watching someone work his or her ass off on the chorus line, what motivates them or what they experienced in their lives to get there, then Ghetto Superstar: The Man That I Am will give you the answer.

Written and performed by Billy Porter, a self-proclaimed Black Broadway Bitch, Ghetto Superstar is a unique cabaret experience that is packing them in at Joe's Pub at the Public Theater, but it's unlikely it will have sufficient mass appeal to expand to a larger venue, so see it now. Performing with a strong back up band and two excellent back-up singers, Porter tells the story of his life in words and music. When his mom first heard him sing, he tells us, she knew he would become a preacher, but he knew his would be a "non-traditional ministry… because I was a sissy." Even as a "sissy," Porter didn't know he "was broken until a psychologist told my mother I needed to be fixed and she needed to get a man around the house to teach me to be a man." Billy swaggers, "I was prepared for man lessons." Of course the man who his mother brought into the house ultimately abused Billy for five years.

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His life changed when he watched the Tony Awards in 1982, and saw Jennifer Holliday perform "Dreamgirls." "From that moment on, the theater became my church," he tells us. "My life is in two-parts: B.C. and A.D. - Before Christ and After Dreamgirls." Billy's story is one of record company deceit and greed; his struggles as a gay man with an un-accepting family, community and religion; his own need for stardom and his "denial of everything I am in return for fame."

Billy's voice and music shifts from Nat King Cole to Billy Preston and from Jennifer Holliday to Little Richard, with some Reverend Al Sharpton/Martin Luther King thrown in to preach "All men are created equal."

Ghetto Superstar offers a non-traditional, unusual, unexpected, personal, political and enjoyable evening that has equal measures of song, poetry, relevance, sad honesty, hopeful enthusiasm and gospel preaching. It's a story audiences are grateful Billy Porter is telling at Joe's Pub.

Jack Myers Entertainment Report's entertainment rating system is based on a maximum of five jacks and a minimum of zero jacks. 0 = awful; 1 = pretty bad; 2 = okay but don't go out of your way to see it; 3 = reasonably good but not special; 4 = very good and worth paying attention to; 5 = exceptional. Opinions are based on my own likes, dislikes and preferences.