STAGE REVIEW : Brand-New Barry Yourgrau in ‘Brand New Show’ at the Largo

Maybe it’s a matter of getting used to an artist’s public personality, but the Barry Yourgrau who performed his twisted minuets of fiction at Cafe Largo recently was a vastly improved, supercharged version of the Barry Yourgrau who performed last year at Saxon Lee Gallery. “Barry Yourgrau’s Brand New Show” harmonizes a writer who wriggles under your skin like a snake with a performer who wants to make sure you’re getting every word.

Undoubtedly, the Largo’s stage environment helps. Standing, as he is accustomed, before a music stand adjacent to a stool on which sits a tall glass of water, Yourgrau is caught in focused spotlights that strip away all distraction. The ear is constantly at full attention when listening to him, but this time, the eye was pulled in.

The lights, with the image of Yourgrau emphatically accenting sentences and remarks with swings and strikes of his arm or broad arches of his eyebrows, became a visual equivalent of a very concentrated read.

And it is a reading , in the best sense, even though Yourgrau reportedly detests that term when it comes to his shows--the term he reportedly prefers. It may help, too, that he’s been doing some acting apart from his performance readings (as Edward Teller in “Fat Man and Little Boy”), for his reading is like an actor’s, finding dramatic potential in every word.

You can especially pick up on this if you read along with him from his second book of fiction, “Wearing Dad’s Head,” from which he culls most of the evening’s material. His pauses between paragraphs are like compressed intervals between acts, as his voice travels from the frantic to the contemplative, or back again. There is no set, no director, but there is theater going on here.

Despite the book title, Yourgrau’s current story selection tends to emphasize the mother, with an interlude into some unpublished, sexually charged stories (one, titled “The Surprise,” is every date’s nightmare). In the brief, narratively linked tales, Mom, like Dad, eventually dies, after slowly giving in to Dad’s irreversible attraction to unreality. It is a coy upending of literature’s standard view that parents represent the stolidly real, while children bond with fantasy.

Yourgrau’s child becomes an increasingly terrified and fascinated observer of his family’s breakdown. His only safety net is in the telling, with an eye for the colorfully explosive--much like Yourgrau live. Writer, hero and performer become one.

At 432 N. Fairfax Ave., on Sundays, 7 p.m., through Dec. 17. Tickets: $7; (213) 852-1073.