Besides being an early champion of clean, vivid and terse prose, Ernest Hemingway was one of the first modernists to understand the importance of cultivating a novelist's public aura. He not only viewed literary competitors as boxing-ring opponents, he made sure everyone knew he did. Playwright John deGroot's one-man show, starring Adrian Sparks, displays a Papa Hemingway in full sunset glory as self-mythologist, raconteur, and critic of American small-mindedness. The setting is his Havana home in 1959 (it's wicker tropicality and game-hunter atmosphere nicely evoked by set designer Jeff G. Rack). Downing Bloody Marys, he broods over growing up in a female-dominated family, regales us with gossip about F. Scott Fitzgerald and grumbles about his four marriages. Under Martha Demsons' relaxed direction, Sparks' Hemingway is a brawling, profane and surprisingly likable Hemingway who guides us along an anecdotal safari of his life. Sparks also bears an uncanny resemblance to the novelist, which doesn't hurt. DeGroot’s two-act, 90 minute monologue is a pleasant way to reacquaint ourselves with an American legend – and a hard drinking male American obsessed with sexual swagger and fears of castration.