• The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey

  • By: Celeste Lecesne
  • Narrated by: Celeste Lecesne
  • Length: 1 hr and 2 mins
  • 4.4 out of 5 stars (9,669 ratings)

Prime logo Prime members: New to Audible?
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.
The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey  By  cover art

The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey

By: Celeste Lecesne
Narrated by: Celeste Lecesne
Try for $0.00

$14.95/month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $7.95

Buy for $7.95

Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.

Publisher's summary

Writer of the Academy award-winning short Trevor, founder of The Trevor Project (a 24-hour nationwide crisis hotline for LGBTQIA+ youth), and stage and screen actor, Celeste Lecesne performs their hit off-Broadway play, The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey. This live performance of a powerful police procedural comes to life through the artistry of Celeste Lecesne and is accompanied by the original music of Duncan Sheik. Celeste portrays every character in a small Jersey Shore town as they unravel the story of Leonard Pelkey, a tenaciously optimistic and flamboyant 14-year-old boy who has gone missing. A luminous force of nature whose magic is only truly felt once he is gone, Leonard becomes an unexpected inspiration as the town’s citizens question how they live, who they love, and what they leave behind.

Brash detective Chuck DeSantis seeks out answers as to why Leonard is missing. Along the way, questions about the teen’s sexuality force members of the community to confront their own biases and beliefs. This poetic piece of audio leads listeners down an important path towards understanding and acceptance. The entire town changes forever because of Leonard Pelkey—a character originally from Celeste Lecesne’s young adult book Absolute Brightness that inspired the play. This whodunit brims with humor and heart and delivers a deeply important message about love, prejudice, and being yourself.

The New York Times raved that The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey "...leave[s] you beaming with joy...a superlative solo show...Lecesne is a writer of wit and keen observational skills, who here unfolds a dark tale that shimmers with the needling suspense you associate with the best police procedurals."

Written and performed by Celeste Lecesne

Sound design by Christian Frederickson

Original music by Duncan Sheik

Note: The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey contains adult language.

©2019 Celeste Lecesne (P)2019 AO Media LLC
  • Performance
  • Categories: LGBTQ+

Go Behind the Scenes with Celeste Lecesne

0:00

Publisher's summary

Writer of the Academy award-winning short Trevor, founder of The Trevor Project (a 24-hour nationwide crisis hotline for LGBTQIA+ youth), and stage and screen actor, Celeste Lecesne performs their hit off-Broadway play, The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey. This live performance of a powerful police procedural comes to life through the artistry of Celeste Lecesne and is accompanied by the original music of Duncan Sheik. Celeste portrays every character in a small Jersey Shore town as they unravel the story of Leonard Pelkey, a tenaciously optimistic and flamboyant 14-year-old boy who has gone missing. A luminous force of nature whose magic is only truly felt once he is gone, Leonard becomes an unexpected inspiration as the town’s citizens question how they live, who they love, and what they leave behind.

Brash detective Chuck DeSantis seeks out answers as to why Leonard is missing. Along the way, questions about the teen’s sexuality force members of the community to confront their own biases and beliefs. This poetic piece of audio leads listeners down an important path towards understanding and acceptance. The entire town changes forever because of Leonard Pelkey—a character originally from Celeste Lecesne’s young adult book Absolute Brightness that inspired the play. This whodunit brims with humor and heart and delivers a deeply important message about love, prejudice, and being yourself.

The New York Times raved that The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey "...leave[s] you beaming with joy...a superlative solo show...Lecesne is a writer of wit and keen observational skills, who here unfolds a dark tale that shimmers with the needling suspense you associate with the best police procedurals."

Written and performed by Celeste Lecesne

Sound design by Christian Frederickson

Original music by Duncan Sheik

Note: The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey contains adult language.

©2019 Celeste Lecesne (P)2019 AO Media LLC
.

Our favorite moments from The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey

  • The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey
  • Reporting Leonard missing
  • The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey
  • Searching for hope
  • The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey
  • Leonard’s super power
Celeste Lecesne

About the Creator and Performer

Celeste Lecesne wrote the short film Trevor, which won the 1995 Academy Award for Best Live Action Short and inspired the founding of The Trevor Project, the only nationwide 24-hour suicide prevention and crisis intervention Lifeline for LGBTQIA+ and questioning youth. He created The Road Home: Stories of Children of War, which was presented at the International Peace Initiative at The Hague, and produced the documentary film, After the Storm, about the lives of 12 young people living in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Celeste adapted Armistead Maupin’s Further Tales of The City series and was a writer on the series Will & Grace. He has written three novels for young adults and created The Letter Q: Queer Writers’ Notes to Their Younger Selves. As an actor, Celeste has appeared on TV in Sex and the City, on Broadway in The Best Man, and off-Broadway in The Boys in The Band, Cloud 9, One Man Band, Word of Mouth (Drama Desk Award), and The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey (Outer Critics Circle Award). Celeste brilliantly performs every character in the audio version of his hit play The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey.

No travel, no lines, no pricey tickets. Just the drama.

Audible Theater offers a front row seat to the best plays and performances – anytime, anywhere.
0:00

What listeners say about The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    6,310
  • 4 Stars
    1,858
  • 3 Stars
    961
  • 2 Stars
    271
  • 1 Stars
    269
Performance
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    7,094
  • 4 Stars
    1,067
  • 3 Stars
    395
  • 2 Stars
    135
  • 1 Stars
    125
Story
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    5,628
  • 4 Stars
    1,676
  • 3 Stars
    929
  • 2 Stars
    305
  • 1 Stars
    251

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

A Story About People Like Me, But Not For Us.

I listened to this one this morning while I walked the dog, and it's safe to say I'm sitting here beyond conflicted. I think it's because "The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey" is about me, but it's not at all—on any level—for me.

Let me explain. James Lecense wrote, narrated, and acted this himself, playing all the characters, and he did a pretty solid job. I believed the voices, the characters, and definitely the camp. If you don't know who James Lecense is—as I didn't—he wrote the short "Trevor," and is a founder of "The Trevor Project." Lecense is obviously a massive force in education and promoting empathy among those who don't seem to want to consider us LGBT folk as human. And we are absolutely the better for having him among us, as "Trevor" and "The Trevor Project" are both incredible forces for good. Truly.

This audio might do the same for some readers. In fairness, I'm not sure I would have picked it up had I known a bit more about it. The blurb describes Leonard as "a tenaciously optimistic and flamboyant 14-year-old boy who goes missing."

"Missing."

Now, I suppose it could be considered a spoiler to mention that almost immediately in the narrative we find out what happened to Leonard (and I'm going to, so eject here if you want), but the phrasing there had me thinking I was potentially in for a story about a kid who took off for somewhere else, or maybe a mystery that's never unraveled. Instead, no, it's pretty much what ever story about a missing fourteen year old turns into, and we learn that Leonard has been murdered and tied down and dropped in a lake.

At the funeral, the cop writes "Possible Hate Crime" down on his notepad for the first time, and I start to realize this is a story about people like me but it's not for people like me. It's for people who need examples of people like me doing good and bringing light into the world being snuffed out to frame it from the point of view of a tragedy, to teach and learn how awful that is.

I already know. And I'm exhausted by endless stories where every LGBT person in the story is dead (because this gets doubled-down later, of course, when the cop interviews a side-character I believe we're meant to empathize with mentions how he used to be an abusive father to his own LGBT kid because he wanted to beat it out of him, but he got a second chance through meeting Leonard, to "do it right this time," but yeah, too late for his kid, his kid died in the 90's. Oh, and would the cop like some hot chocolate?)

There is zero closure to this story. We never find out why the killer did what he did. We never find out how he and Leonard ended up in each other's presence on the final day. We never hear the murderer speak about his crime, though he does get a maximum sentence (underscoring we're in fiction territory). No, All we're given is a moving tribute from the cop—a man who never met Leonard— about how the light from this kid shines on in everyone he met and touched and I am so very, very done.

So, that was my one-star emotional, frustrated, angry reaction to yet another story about how hate kills us but we're supposed to celebrate posthumous LGBT light because the kid may have died, but he changed us all, so he's not really gone forever. No. He's gone. Forever.

So why did I give it three stars? Because it's a five-star story for not-LGBTfolk in the same way that "but what if it was your daughter?" is sometimes the only way to get some men to consider the impact of misogyny when they should damn well be fully capable of understanding all women matter regardless of relation. There's a line in the performance where someone bemoans how they don't believe "everything happens for a reason" (and huzzah to that!) but that "you have to find the reason in everything" and I think that's the crux of this story's purpose. I didn't need that reason. I didn't need that story. I've lived it, thanks. But who knows, maybe there are people out there who'll find it inspiring or moving or in some way enlightening. But if you already know LGBT people shouldn't be killed for being themselves, or if you're LGBT yourself and really tired of stories where the whole point is how people learn from us when we're murdered, I'd suggest skipping this one completely. I wish I had.

The audio performance was, as I said, really strong. You can tell Lecesne is an actor and although sometimes the choice to go into high camp with the characters clashes with the tone of the narrative's events, characterization never wavers, and you always know who's speaking.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

156 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Terrific!

Wonderful performances, great story with good substance, and just an all around good listen. my only complaint is that I didn't want it to end so soon.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

19 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

What a gift to the world!

Bless James for bringing this rich, powerful, funny and human story of dear Leonard. Each time I have seen the play and now listen in, I feel expanded, clearer and widened out.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

16 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

So relevant.

Exceptional performance. A story with much to consider and ponder. Why is different a bad thing? Isn't that where we often find better?

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

16 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Great writing/Funny and touching

This I would pay for even! Sent me right to Wikipedia for more info about James Lecesne. Such a talent! Thank you, Audible, for bringing all these wonderful plays and performances to us each month. You are totally redefining the listening experience.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

15 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Sadly Heartwarming

This was the perfect short listen. It's uplifting and tragic at the same time. The author did a wonderful job translating the brightness and inspiring comfortabilty of Leonard.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

15 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

HOLY GUACAMOLE! MUST LISTEN!

Funny, quirky, sad, brilliantly written and narrated. He is AMAZING! Take a chance. it totally pays off. I wish it was longer

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

13 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

A lesson learned

An amazing story of how a young flamboyant boy changed a town. The story is the same for many of us at that age. I personally wasn’t that flamboyant but knew of others just like Leonard. This story brought me back to my life when I was treated horribly in school for being different. The author and narrator captured the essence perfectly. A must listen to all. Maybe learn something about yourself by surprise. I hope this author goes on to write more amazing stories with great value to the listeners.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

13 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Fantastic!

I’ve never written a review before, and I’ve been an audible customer for 15 years or so…
This story is a fantastic gem. A well-crafted short story; moving, nicely paced, authentic dialogue that reveals characters three dimensionally. Beautifully performed. I highly recommend.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

12 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Exceptional voice acting

Some of the best voice acting I have ever heard. I thoroughly enjoyed this funny, moving story.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

11 people found this helpful