Latino History for Morons

By BEN BRANTLEY

John Leguizamo in his solo show “Latin History for Morons,” at the Public Theater.

Resist the urges to call the fire department that you will probably experience during John Leguizamo’s “Latin History for Morons,” which opened on Monday night at the Public Theater. That’s chalk dust, not smoke, rising from its star’s feverish frame.

Mr. Leguizamo, you see, has appointed himself our instructor in a class intended to rectify the omissions in standard school texts of his people’s — or peoples’ — contributions to American history. And this grandstanding (and leaping, sliding and hopping) actor and monologuist has equipped himself with the requisite accessories, including a blackboard and an industriously wielded eraser.

It’s understandable, though, if you mistake the chalky clouds in which he moves throughout this harshly funny, surprisingly poignant one-man show for the smoke of firing synapses. Mr. Leguizamo, as is his wont, is churning up hot waves of improbably connected ideas in “Latin History for Morons,” directed by Tony Taccone. As is also Mr. Leguizamo’s wont, he is translating thought into action worthy of an Iron Man competition.

There are those dances, for one thing — freestyle choreographic interpretations of ancient rituals by Aztecs and Incas, as well as sambas, mambos, tangos and an Irish jig. Then there’s his impersonation of his hard-of-hearing uncle, who annotates every word with a literal-minded gesture. And his re-creation of three-way fisticuffs, with Mr. Leguizamo as the punching bag in the middle, to demonstrate the value of loyalty among friends, which somehow relates to the fall of the Inca Empire.

“I’m getting too old for this,” he mutters after falling to the ground. No, he’s not. Mr. Leguizamo registers as hyperkinetic even on the rare occasions he’s standing still during this 90-minute performance piece. And he will most likely remain a perpetual motion machine into his twilight years.

But having now crossed into his 50s, the creator of signature angry-young-Latino works of the 1990s like “Mambo Mouth” and “Freak” has accepted the role of a middle-aged father of two teenagers who are far hipper and savvier than their old man. It is a status he wears with humility and dignity. Well, as much dignity as is allowed to someone whose job is showing himself slipping on the banana peels that life continues to throw in his path.

The humility is undeniable, though, remarkably so for a professional showoff. Attired in professorial jacket and tie, Mr. Leguizamo may score points off us, his ignorant students in the audience. But as he depicts his flailing attempts to help his son prepare a crucial middle school project on Latino heroes, he clearly counts himself among the “morons” of his play’s title.

“Latin History” is, most obviously, a forum for its creator to share his delightfully reprocessed research into the history of indigenous Americans and their European colonizers. (Rachel Hauck’s set is a free-range personal library of clippings and books.) The show slyly poses sharp and timely questions of what culturally defines American identity and who, in the nationalistic age of Trump, has “the right” to be here.

Mr. Leguizamo, whose inspirational source material ranges from the Aztec Codex to Howard Zinn and Sigmund Freud, sees himself as being descended from “a bastardly people,” bred by the intermingling of the Americas’ original inhabitants and their Spanish invaders. He pricelessly describes the conquistadors among the Aztecs as being like “N.B.A. players at a Kardashian pool party.”

Woven amid the memorable one-liners, most of which cannot be quoted here, is the story of Mr. Leguizamo’s quest for the perfect Latino hero for his son’s school presentation. Unfortunately, his son has little use for the mostly military (and mostly soundly defeated) figures that Dad comes up with.

Dealing with such rejection causes Mr. Leguizamo to rethink his notions of not only what ethnic identity is but also what defines heroism. The results are startlingly touching. Fatherhood seems to have brought out the gentler side of Mr. Leguizamo’s persona.

Comedians need their anger, though, and Mr. Leguizamo holds on to what he describes as the “ghetto rage” he developed growing up in Queens, attending schools that were like “‘Lord of the Flies,’ but with a lot less adult supervision.” A splenetic disposition can, of course, be a disadvantage when it comes to the fatherly tasks of dealing with headmasters and fellow parents of students.

So he seeks out the help of a therapist, who in Mr. Leguizamo’s rendering sounds just like Garrison Keillor. The therapist suggests that his patient may need to retire the “outmoded survival skills” of defensive humor that he developed during his boyhood and his continuing “creative yet pathetic need to win the approval of strangers.”

Should Mr. Leguizamo follow this advice, he might well be a happier, calmer, saner individual. Let us pray that metamorphosis never happens.