Review: In Color Theories, Julio Torres Explains Why You’re So Blue

Are you more of a yellow or a navy blue? This question isn’t about what flatters your complexion, but what captures your soul—at least according to the strange and beautiful mind of Julio Torres, who explains it all in Color Theories, his new not-quite-solo show at Performance Space New York.

Silent costars Nick Meyers and Drew Rollins appear first as, respectively, a music box and a puddle of spilled red wine on a stage that has been fashioned into a giant pop-up storybook (Tommaso Ortino’s fantastical set and Muriel Parra’s sculptural costumes brush the outer limits of off-Broadway production values). Torres pops out of a deep hole carved into the pages, a book light antenna protruding from his salt-and-pepper wig like a Dr. Seuss character (Sean Bennett designed the hair). It’s visually arresting and totally ridiculous. What are we about to see?

“I have heard that this is being referred to as an off-Broadway play,” Torres says, immediately dispelling the notion with a naughty toddler head shake. Instead, Torres uses his stage time to explain his “vastly unproven” theories about the cultural and emotional significance of different colors. Yellow is joy, red is anger, which makes orange the meeting-place of childlike wonder and rage. “We like our male celebrities in America to be Orange,” he confidently states—as convincing an explanation of the rise of Donald Trump as I’ve yet encountered.

Wearing paint-splattered white pants and speaking seemingly extemporaneously (as evidenced by frequent auditory pauses), Torres feels like a cross between an eccentric art school lecturer and a children’s television host. He doodles on the set, bathed in lighting designer Emmanuel Delgado’s saturated LED tones, as he unpacks his theory, subtly poking fun at the fashionable rhetoric that governs the humanities. “I’m not talking about Ellen DeGeneres the person,” he qualifies after drawing a yellow jellybean with a mean red filling, “I’m talking about the system that is ellen™.”

While he never says so explicitly, it’s obvious Torres fancies himself a purple, a color of dark power and intrigue. “Lilac is being a mom,” he informs us, “purple is being a stepmother.” He further illustrates purple by seductively curling his dexterous fingers in front of a practical light to create an eerie shadow—and we somehow know exactly what he means.

Torres’s general vibe is that of an extraordinary child who, perhaps lacking friends on his wavelength, has developed a vibrant inner life as a keen observer of the adult world—something unsurprising coming from the writer of the SNL bit “Wells for Boys.” He easily wins the crowd over with his dry but never condescending delivery as he invites us into his rich culture of one. Honestly, it’s just so refreshing to encounter a New York homosexual whose inner child hasn’t drowned in a sea of GHB and self-loathing.

Perhaps Torres has been able to avoid that fate through his aversion to the color that gets the most stage time: navy blue, the color of authority and conformity. Yes, it’s the hue favored by the NYPD, but also passports and big box retail. It’s the color of Bibo, a robot sidekick who pops out of a clock stage left to urge Torres to pick up the pace, lest he go over the 90-minute runtime (Bibo is designed by Monkey Boy Productions, operated by Ian Edlund, and voiced by Joe Rumrill). We grow to disdain Bibo’s frequent interruptions—but are we merely judging a robot by its color?

The extravagant and whimsical trappings of Color Theories mask what this show essentially is: observational stand-up with a side of prop comedy. Yet Torres easily proves that with a splash of paint and the right attitude, even the mustiest old forms can be turned into works of art.