It’s only fitting that “Arias With a Twist” starts with its headliner abducted by aliens: This is a jaw-dropping UFO of a show.
A hallucinatory hybrid of performance art, cabaret and theater, this piece is as unclassifiable — and captivating — as its star, Joey Arias.
An alum of both the downtown gay-arty scene and Cirque du Soleil’s Vegas show “Zumanity,” Arias is a fantastical creature. Sporting bangs and a waist-length ponytail and strapped into a tight Thierry Mugler corset, he looks like an escapee from a ’40s fetish film.
Here, Arias is paired with the perfect accomplice: Basil Twist (last seen on Broadway with “The Pee-wee Herman Show”), the puppeteer who designed and directed this delirious spectacle. Be warned: These playfully inventive puppets aren’t for children.
Take those aliens: They use a “jumbo-size probe” on Arias, who seems to rather enjoy it and belts out Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir” during the procedure.
After his interstellar kidnappers drop him into a mysterious jungle, Arias — an unlikely combo of Dorothy and Alice, with a touch of Bettie Page — embarks on a fabulous journey.
Eating a red mushroom leads to a psychedelic out-of-body experience set to the tune of “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds.” Later, Arias grows so big that he stomps over the Manhattan skyline like a Godzilla in silk stockings.
By the end, he’s morphed into a Billie Holiday-type chanteuse, crooning standards in an art-deco lounge and backed by a quartet of marionettes — the singer’s interaction with the diminutive puppets is really funny.
A hit at HERE three years ago, “Arias With a Twist” has undergone changes to fit the much larger Abrons Arts Center. We lose a certain intimacy, but Daniel Brodie’s new projections on a stage-wide scrim stand out.
The mushroom-induced trip is particularly beautiful: Arias writhes on a black box against a black background, looking as if he’s floating in space, surrounded by gorgeous swirling graphics.
Let this show be a lesson to budget-busting Broadway musicals: You can get a lot out of fabric, strings, a projector . . . and imagination.