Review by Temple Lentz

Lemon Andersen is a hell of a performer, and the press pictures and descriptions for this show just don't do him justice. He's a hard-edged, roughneck kid from Brooklyn, more at ease on the streets than in a theater seat, and gifted with a silver tongue and a way with words that helped him lift himself up, and take others with him in the process.

In "County of Kings: The Beautiful Struggle," Lemon unfolds his memoir, from being a kid in Brooklyn when Brooklyn was the ghetto, watching drugs and AIDS take his mother, and letting money and survival take himself--to being an ex-con with a love of words who discovered poetry and discovered his true purpose: to "take my lemons and make the best goddamned lemonade."

Lemon is funny, smart, touching, and terrifying, and he's got a crazy physicality and flexibility of voice that lets him completely inhabit the characters he's creating onstage to tell his story. Part hip-hop storytelling, part poetry, the show is a coming-of-age memoir of a kid who had to grow up way too quickly, and has spent much of his time on earth playing catch-up, and trying to figure out what he left behind.

Check him out at www.lemonshood.com. You’ll be seeing him again, and hes only going to keep getting better.