" Jack Helbig, Chicago Reader 6/11/92 - ?Quite a different show is Jaroslaw Stremien's one-man homage to the dissident Polish union-leader-turned-president Lech Walesa. Originally written in Polish by Jaroslaw Szymkiewicz and Elzbieta Kisielewska and translated and adapted by Stremien himself, I, Lech Walesa is about as starry-eyed as they come. Told entirely from Walesa's point of view, it briefly recounts his pre-Solidarity life--his courtship, his marriage, his first crowded apartment--before getting to the meat of the show, his repeated clashes with the Polish authorities in the 70s and 80s. The play provides an interesting overview of the social unrest in Poland, with special emphasis on the 1981 strikes at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk.

Unfortunately, Stremien's Walesa appears to know no more about these pivotal events than your average National Public Radio listener. Stremien makes Walesa's emergence as the leader of the Lenin Shipyard strikes sound more like dumb luck than the culmination of years of struggle. It doesn't help that he delivers all of his lines in the same droning voice, or that the play ends with a 20-minute campaign speech.

Which is a shame, because Walesa's story is interesting. (And getting more so--last week Polish prime minister Jan Olszewski abruptly resigned after accusing Walesa of being a KGB mole.) Unfortunately Stremien seems to be in no mood to separate the man from the myth. He touches so briefly on the obstacles Walesa had to overcome that his rise to power ends up seeming utterly unworthy of tribute.