Kwong Hits the ‘Moon’

Wholesome, all-American performance art? In a notably counterculture milieu that celebrates shock value, the notion seems a contradiction in terms. Notwithstanding a few four-letter words sprinkled here and there, veteran solo performer Dan Kwong bridges the gap between performance art and family entertainment in his sweet, childlike, enormously appealing “The Night the Moon Landed on 39th Street” at Highways.

The term “solo show” is slightly misleading here. In a complicated staging that features oodles of video clips and a variety of hilariously low-tech effects, Kwong receives the able support of a score or more supernumeraries, including lighting designer Jose Lopez and “all-around tech genius” Bill Eigenbrodt. However, it’s very much Kwong’s night. In addition to writing, directing and performing, Kwong also designed props and costumes, not to mention producing the many integral video segments. It’s a virtuosic showing.

The mood of “Moon” vacillates from the rib-tickling to the rapturously elegiac. Only once does Kwong allude, and then glancingly, to his painful childhood--but he quickly shrugs off the moment and returns to the true business of the evening--his lifelong preoccupation with that final frontier, space.

Sometimes predictable, Kwong covers much familiar territory--his recollections of the first U.S. moonwalk, for example--but he also includes some understandably arcane anecdotes about the U.S. astronauts aboard the Russian space station Mir that both shock and amuse. A certifiable space buff, Kwong affectionately sends up his own passion with some comic video footage in which he undergoes mock astronaut training, teetering on the miniature planes and merry-go-rounds at a children’s playground.

Kwong opens with a reminiscence from his childhood. While outside playing with hula-hoops (and indeed, much of Kwong’s monologue is delivered while hula-hooping, no mean feat), Kwong and his sister spot a huge and dazzling moonrise that seems just yards away. Convinced the moon has landed on their street, the children sprint wildly toward the shining object of their fascination.

Of course, the children never reach their goal, but Kwong’s heartbreaking homage to the credulity of childhood--where magic is just down the street--is heartwarming and painfully evocative of innocence and loss.

Somehow, Kwong has held onto his sense of childlike wonder about the cosmos, and that awe informs his free-wheeling, uproarious performance. Kwong’s deliberately simplistic piece may not put you into intellectual orbit or challenge you to reevaluate your notions of the universe, but it will certainly uplift your spirits for a brief and pleasant interlude.

BE THERE

“The Night the Moon Landed on 39th Street,” Highways, 1651 18th St., Santa Monica. Thursdays-Sundays, 8:30 p.m. Ends July 3. (No show July 4.) $15. (310) 315-1459. Running time: 1 hour, 25 minutes.