Nor, to name a much more complex work, does The Laramie Project ask us to adore Matthew Shepard more in death than in life. Certainly the Academy Award–winning short film Trevor (based on an earlier Lecesne play called Word of Mouth) does not require the main character’s beatification in order for us to mourn his suicide. We should not need Leonard to be a great glowing soul in order to find his murder horrible. (The title phrase comes from astronomy: The “absolute brightness” of a celestial body is an intrinsic quantity that’s stable regardless of how it’s perceived.) The proofs offered are insubstantial: Leonard helped one woman update her look he read Dickens with the shopkeeper he gave a mesmerizing audition as Ariel in fairy wings for the drama coach’s production of The Tempest. No performance could have captured that possibly nonexistent quality, and yet we can’t help feeling that the sainthood Lecesne wants to confer on him requires proofs beyond anecdotes describing his special glow. It’s probably smart that we never see Leonard himself, except in a blurry photo Lecesne’s conceit is that the boy, by being so relentlessly true to his own nature, brought out the truth in other people’s, good or bad. Instead, we get a series of amusing, if sometimes too cute, impersonations of people who loved Leonard even if they thought he was “too much.” These include the hairstylist at the salon where Leonard liked to kibitz with the clients about their bouffants and makeup a lisping British-expat after-school drama coach a Mafia wife who finds one of Leonard’s rainbow platform sneakers floating in the lake and an elderly German shopkeeper who befriended Leonard decades after - wouldn’t you know it? - having alienated his own gay son.

(Among other capital offenses, he liked to wear Capri pants.) Since only one of the townies that Lecesne gives voice to is a homophobe, there’s not much mystery here, nor, in a play consisting mostly of monologues, much drama of any other sort. We quickly learn why, as well: Leonard Pelkey was an outrageously flamboyant gay boy, unwilling or unable to “tone it down” for other people’s comfort or even his own safety. Chief among them is the improbable, noir-spouting police detective assigned to investigate the disappearance of a 14-year-old who is not just missing but murdered. Such is the case with The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey, a 75-minute one-man show in which James Lecesne, who also wrote the piece, portrays nine denizens of a Jersey shore town. Beware short plays bearing long titles they are usually not short enough.

Absolute brightness by james lecesne