Funny, you don't look Aztec. To hear John Leguizamo tell it, he is equal parts Aztec, Incan, and Cherokee, with a little bit of Spanish served reluctantly on the side. In his mistitled solo show Latin History for Morons, this versatile performer largely recounts the decimation of indigenous people in the Americas �" by the Conquistadors and their associates in the south, and by the colonies and then the federal government in the north. You'd imagine an uneasy friction for those with both victims and their victimizers as ancestors, but that's not the road Leguizamo travels in the world premiere of his latest one-man show at Berkeley Rep.
"I've got to reboot you about what you think of Latin people," he says at the top of the show, telling audience members that they are all morons on the subject. He does say he also belonged in this category before his son's school project led him to study up on the subject, as he displays a collection of impressive historical tomes from which he gathered facts that he said neither he nor his son had learned in school. Leguizamo plays the fool enough himself to further help disarm an audience greeted with an insult.
Equipped with a chalkboard, the Colombian-born actor recounts with maps and numbers the devastation wrought by the new-world explorers, plunderers, and enslavers. But sobering facts can generally lead to jokes that can sometimes be sharp but that are more often obvious or curiously dated. "The Conquistadors were like basketball players at a Kardashian pool party," he says, adding that "Columbus was the Donald Trump of the new world." There were laughs and applause for these topical references, and STDs seem always to be a popular punch line, but not enough people seemed to remember Alec Baldwin's ranting voice mail to his daughter to elicit much of a reaction. After all, it was an embarrassing leak from nine years back that long ago played out.
Leguizamo hangs his collection of historical data on a weak thread, claiming his fury of research came about when his son couldn't come up with a personal hero for a school essay. Leguizamo thinks his 8th-grade son needs to get in touch with his roots, and find a Latino/a figure to write about that includes cultures that existed long before any Latino presence set foot in the Americas. He manically throws names and numbers at his nonplussed son, who doesn't really want his father's help. Curiously absent from his primer on Latin history, culture, and people is much acknowledgement that a good chunk of it came from those places that gave it its name �" i.e., the Latinate countries of Europe.
Much of the 100-minute show has Leguizamo vocally impersonating a swathe of characters both current and historical. He can mine some good comedy from his mimicry, but several recurring voices �" notably his wife's �" are surprisingly mundane. There is equal-opportunity offense given in his stereotyping, and Montezuma emerges as a silly faggot enchanted by the Conquistador Hernan Cortes. "My brother's gay so I have gay-munity," the performer assures us about his simpering impersonation of the Aztec emperor.
But Leguizamo is nothing if not a whirlwind, leaping through sometimes-dubious historical data punctuated with comically distorted versions of Native American dances that can leave him winded. Director Tony Taccone, Berkeley Rep's artistic director, helped Leguizamo hone the material variously at comedy clubs and theatrical workshops. There are some clever touches in the staging �" Leguizamo whitening his hair with chalkboard erasers, for one �" but ultimately the strangely curated material feels forced into a format that never quite rings true, and certainly doesn't live up to its title.
Did you hear the one about the Indians who died because they got lost on the Trail of Tears? "It was because even then, men wouldn't ask for directions," says Leguizamo. History class dismissed.
John Leguizamo: Latin History for Dummies will run through Aug. 14 at Berkeley Rep. Tickets are $55-$60. Call (510) 647-2949 or go to berkeleyrep.org.