Ghetto Klown

"This is a cautionary tale," says John Leguizamo at the start of his solo show, and then he demonstrates how and why. This fifth autobiographical fantasia from the nonpareil author-performer doesn't exactly break ground, just break-dances its way across Leguizamo's subway trek from Queens delinquency to Hollywood and Broadway stardom with uncanny energy and matchless talent.

At the audience's first sight of designer Happy Massee's unit set of isolated pieces, we feel a comforting sense of expectancy. With Leguizamo's entrance, in which he hops, power-steps, and glides like an impish refugee from a flash mob, the house justifiably ignites. Before the evening is over, this ingenious nonesuch has repeatedly burned it down.

Leguizamo's gifts for mimicry and rapid-fire riffs are undiminished by time, his liquid face and self-mocking technique at their zenith. Although the basic narrative may feel familiar to anybody who has ever read a show business memoir—or seen Leguizamo's previous shows—it's the raucously buoyant way he pulls the pieces together here, with several exceptional writing passages, that proves riotous.

Starting with his early days as a teenage wag, kicking his way into the conductor's box on the train to make comic announcements, and winding up with his touching summation, Leguizamo never runs out of steam. Whether lovingly recalling his Hepburn-voiced acting teacher, who vowed she'd make him "a Latino Laurence Olivier," becoming past and present wives and/or girlfriends on a hairpin turn, or ruthlessly channeling celebrated former colleagues—his Steven Seagal, Patrick Swayze, and Al Pacino takes are particularly incisive—Leguizamo navigates his personal journey as though airborne.

As ever, it's the honesty beneath the wisecracks and chameleonic vocal/physical shifts that fuels Leguizamo's art, typified by the family depictions that are key to "Ghetto Klown" 's accrued emotional punch. We've seen acrid Papi and pragmatic Moms in earlier shows, but they land here to rejuvenated effect, and the twin father-son face-offs that cap each act are house-stilling. His recollections of venerated Gramps and ex–oldest chum Ray-Ray are by turns uproarious and heart-stopping.

Director Fisher Stevens keeps things firmly focused—no mean feat. Peter Fitzgerald's split-second sound cues, Jen Schriever's multilayered lighting, and especially Aaron Gonzalez's stunning projections are invaluable assets. Nonetheless, it's all about Leguizamo, whose rarified ability to locate entire populations out of his own persona is in a class all its own. Despite occasional topical redundancies, "Ghetto Klown" is redoubtable—and Leguizamo's most rewardingly scabrous outing to date.

Presented by WestBeth Entertainment at the Ricardo Montálban Theatre, 1615 Vine St., Hollywood. Sept. 30-Oct. 16. Tue.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 5 p.m. (800) 595-4849. www.tix.com.