Arias with a Twist.

The theater almost performed a striptease for us before Joey Arias’s adventure had even begun. Curtains opened, the stage revealed itself, and the room seemed to be joining in the performance. That was quite a welcome to Arias with a Twist at HERE Arts Center. Downstairs in the puppet theater, we found a wonderfully overwhelming mix of puppetry, drag, camp, comedy, singing and dancing. It was loud, bright, very funny and full of things to look at.

Originally staged at HERE in 2008, Arias with a Twist felt like a triumphant return. Created by Joey Arias and Basil Twist, the show begins with a fairly serious interruption to Joey’s travel plans. Aliens abduct Joey on the way to perform in New York City. From there, the journey goes well beyond the planet, and the production keeps finding new ways to stretch what this little stage can contain. Joey is the human figure at the center of a world where almost everything else is puppetry.

We have enjoyed seeing puppetry up close at this venue before, but this felt like more than being close. We felt as though we were in it. Joey came in and out of the audience, bringing us into the adventure rather than leaving us to watch from a comfortable distance. The intimacy also made everything more intense: the sound, the action, the jokes and the sheer amount of movement happening right in front of us.

The stage kept opening up in layers. There were curtains behind curtains, pieces of city, and new spaces appearing where we thought there could not possibly be anything more. At one point, Joey arrived in a jungle with beautiful flowers. We loved those details, and the way the whole production could be glamorous, eccentric and exuberant without losing its handmade appeal. It was over the top in a very good way, with something else always waiting to be revealed.

The variety of puppetry was a pleasure in itself. Even the band accompanying Joey was made up of marionettes, and that band was marvelous. Around Joey, everything seemed alive. Not just the obvious puppet characters, but the curtains, the microphone and the larger pieces of the stage all felt part of the same animated world. At times, we almost imagined another puppeteer somewhere above it all, pulling the strings of the entire theater.

That sense extended to the alien sequence. Without giving away what happens to Joey, the moving apparatus used during the assessment was operated by a person with ropes. Even that was effectively a puppet. We loved how much of the production depended on people manipulating things onstage or out of sight. The scale could change enormously, but there was still that direct connection between a person’s movement and the strange thing happening before us.

The Godzilla sequence was another particularly funny example. It mixed the real Joey with a puppet Joey and then giant pieces of Joey, including feet stomping through the city. The changes in scale were hilarious. What also struck us was how much had to line up to make the whole thing work. These were not simply objects placed on a stage. They moved, lit up and became part of a much bigger moving picture.

Ayumu "Poe" Saegusa’s lighting was part of that busy visual world, with light and movement reaching into the scenery itself. The transparent screen used for projections was especially clever. There were moments when the surroundings were moving while Joey had to be in exactly the right place for the image to remain clear. We could appreciate the precision without losing the fun of watching it. There was a lot happening, but the different elements kept working together.

We would happily watch a backstage documentary about how this was put together. Where did they keep all that scenery? How did they manage those successive reveals in such a small space? Those were genuine questions we were asking each other afterward. The stage seemed to have more layers than the room could reasonably hold, and we wanted to understand how the performers and all those moving pieces fitted around one another.

The comedy was just as deliberately excessive as the scenery. A joke would reach what seemed like its natural stopping point, then carry on another two or three times. That pushed us a little beyond comfortable laughter and left us slightly on edge, but we found it very clever. An apparent missed-cue moment was a joke, not a mistake, and its repetition was beautifully judged. Joey took it almost too far, which was exactly what made it work.

This is definitely not a puppet show for children. Some of the material is very rude, with puppets doing things to each other, and to Joey, that we would not see on The Muppet Show. Yet the puppets remained oddly endearing. That contrast was a big part of the enjoyment: the humor could approach the crude or grotesque, while the handmade figures doing it were still charming. We were laughing at both sides of that contradiction.

Joey’s singing gave us another layer to enjoy. That voice had a powerful, rebellious quality that suited the exuberance onstage. But the show was not all volume and outrageous behavior. Toward the end, a quieter song brought a tender moment into the evening. We appreciated that change of feeling. Alongside all the jokes and visual invention, there was room for something gentler, and it reached us.

What impressed us throughout was how thoroughly rehearsed it all appeared while sometimes looking like organized chaos. Joey’s movements could look spontaneous, even when the surrounding activity clearly demanded careful positioning. That is a difficult balance, and here it was very well done. We felt the artists’ commitment to making every part of the piece live, right down to a moving curtain. Nothing seemed separate from the performance.

The small venue felt absolutely right for this show. Our conversation afterward wandered into what it means to live an artistic dream, and whether a bigger stage necessarily makes that dream more complete. Watching Joey here, we felt we were seeing an artist living that dream. That is not to suggest any limit on where Joey could perform. We simply loved experiencing this particular extravagance in a space where we could be so close to it.

By the end, we were moved and happily joined in with the rest of the audience in giving Joey a well deserved standing ovation. For all its outrageous humor and sensory overload, Arias with a Twist felt like a complete celebration of performing art. We left talking about the puppets, the music, the precision and the sheer pleasure of seeing so much imagination brought to life. We want to see it again before it finishes on November 1st. Once was wonderful, but we want more.