Say what you will about Donny, he's a showman. A teen magician, Donny (played by the magnetic Harry Farmer) is deluded in his abilities, he's blinkered to anything beyond the scope of his act, he lacks the ability to connect with others or glean their intentions and yet when he works the room, he's a raconteur to be reckoned with. It helps that he has a meticulous (read: hypercritical) mind for details. He slips easily into the skin and mannerisms of his just-as-persnickety mother, Yvonne, his aunt-cum-guardian and costumer, Jess, and his lovely assistant and would-be love interest, Sharmy. He remembers the fine details: the layout of a room, the clothes people were wearing, lipstick stains on stranger's teeth or their unkempt neck hair. But what's fractured and fabricated in the account he gives us of his life and the events that led him to the telling, well, he has good reason to lie, let's leave it at that. "Everybody lies," he tells us. But one senses the biggest lie is to himself.

In Tonight with Donny Stixx, now playing in rep with Dark Vanilla Jungle at HERE Arts Center, Philip Ridley has written a character study of a boy who's a scratch test of social and mental disorders, giving us an unflinching look at the deadly potential that can arise from living exclusively in one's inner world. The uncomfortable realities of Donny's life are easily brushed aside. He rationalizes slights for a time but when confronted with a truth from someone he respects, he snaps in a big way at a performance in a hospice home. Frances Loy directs Mr. Farmer with no-frills staging on Steven Kemp's suggestive set (linoleum tile, a chair and a wall of scoop lights -- Dante Olivia Smith's design ranging from affectingly presentational to dissonant).

Intermissionless and endlessly engaging, Tonight With Donny Stixx may be an evening spent with a disturbed individual, but the sympathy it elicits for its subject is a credit to the talents involved. It's a night well spent.