24 hours to trade limbo for l’amour

Subversive glee supplies the filigree in “LOVE (American Style),” which ends its Highways run tonight. Writer-director Rochelle Fabb’s existential romance should satisfy those who prefer their valentines cut on the metrosexual, necromantic bias.

Inspired by Jean-Paul Sartre’s novel “Les Jeux Sont Faits,” “LOVE” begins at the entrance to limbo, here the Highways lobby. Madame Baltozar (Anna Dresdon) invites attendees to sign in and take a number, assisted by the Angel of Death (Franc Baliton) and the Leopard Lady (Cindy Pop).

Jim Claytor’s soundtrack fills the venue, choreographer Michael Sakamoto’s talking-heads video ends with a Jorge Luis Borges poem, and “LOVE’s” revels unravel.

The trajectory follows a priest (Christian Jon Meoli) and a prostitute (Fabb). She and her fellow “comfort girl” (Joan Spitler) render services to soldiers, while the Web-tormented priest acquires computer-top icons, overseen by two devils (Reuben Canonge and co-director L. Flint Esquerra), plus the foyer grotesques.

After cleric and call girl meet unexpected deaths, they meet up in purgatory. Because the Fates (Michael Morrissey, Erin Rae and Spitler) missed a stitch, the soul mates are given 24 hours to resurrect and connect in the flesh without fear. Madame Baltozar warns, “From a moment’s hesitation, the seeds of an eternity’s sorrow are sewn.”

Fabb, a veteran of performance guru Rachel Rosenthal’s watch, has comparable fun with this mix of absurdist poetry, emotional friezes and Bettie Page’s diary pages. Sakamoto’s butoh moves, Bob Bellerue’s lighting and Samon Takahashi’s electronic waltz theme are effective at maintaining mood (though assuring audience activity proves trickier). Marcus Kuiland-Nazario’s costumes are tickling, especially those of the Fates, who resemble a Dadaist homecoming court.

Despite unwieldy transitions and some textual fizzles, the players rebound like Camarillo State Hospital outpatients, and should all be brought to David Lynch’s attention. The straight-faced Fabb is fabulous, well paired with Meoli’s lapsing Catholic. Dresdon, Baliton and Pop are outre and hysterical. Canonge and Esquerra do a demented demonic duet, and Rae, Spitler and Morrissey (motorized by Buck McGibbony’s robotics) swipe the show.

Audiences anticipating a television parody will be disappointed in “LOVE (American Style),” but fans of interactive mayhem may picture Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir waltzing along with this madcap danse macabre.

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‘LOVE (American Style)’

Where: Highways Gallery and Performance Space, 1651 18th St., Santa Monica

When: Today, 8:30 and 11 p.m.

Ends: Today

Price: $16

Contact: (310) 315-1459

Running time: 1 hour, 15 minutes