With a title like Unmitigated Truth: Life, a Lavatory, Loves, and Ladies, you might think that Melvin Van Peebles' new show, currently at the Algonquin Theater, is an autobiographical memoir. The pioneering African-American filmmaker, Emmy Award winner, and Tony Award nominee would surely have a lot of juicy anecdotes to share. And yet, he's taken a different tactic for this performance, which is instead made up of an odd, yet compelling collection of stories and songs. The arrangement of the material sometimes seems completely arbitrary, and the show, performed in a tiny and intimate venue, can have you grinning uncontrollably one moment and scratching your head the next.

One of the first[...]