‘Alien Abduction’ Doesn’t Quite Grab Audience

A tall white frowning figure enters with a creaking mechanical gait. His green hair is sparse and his lightbulb eyes unblinking. “I don’t have a heart; gravity is how I get my blood to move through my body. I haven’t had a heart since I was a child,” the figure ominously pronounces.

But this is not the alien in Leo Garcia’s low-key one-man show, “My Alien Abduction,” at Highways. Garcia’s warped clown costume represents an image from his past, an effigy traditionally burned near his hometown at night, when the full moon hangs “bright and big like a giant opal.”

Removing the costume’s headpiece, Garcia paces on his squeaking stilts, drawing us back into a family history that predates U.S. nationhood. He intertwines scenes from his boyhood in rural New Mexico and his growing awareness of being different with the tale of his supernatural abduction.

Recounting how “in a small, little town in the valley of secrets, population 18,” he insisted on performing in the talent show as Shirley Temple. He trades in his clownish duds for frilly fare, and in his blond wig, sassy baby-doll dress, red petticoats, white lace-trimmed anklet socks and tap shoes, his wiry, hairy body is laughably ludicrous. Yet this is mistakenly underplayed.

Devoid of even the saccharine coyness of the original Temple, he seems oddly sexless considering all of the descriptions of sexual activity that follow. The projected images of pornographic photos and videos provide the seamy sexual content, but under director Corky Dominguez, Garcia’s performance remains curiously matter-of-fact.

The video and photo imagery are well-conceived, but in the end Garcia, currently an artist-in-residence at the Mark Taper Forum, doesn’t manage to make a compelling theatrical experience. His laid-back demeanor takes on a too-comfortable rhythm, neither creating suspense nor confronting the audience with interesting challenges.

BE THERE

“My Alien Abduction,” Highways, 1651 18th St., Santa Monica. Friday-Saturday, 8:30 p.m. Ends Saturday. $15. (213) 660-8587. Running time: 1 hour.