It’s a testament to John Leguizamo’s storytelling chops, and general spazzy likability, that his new one-man show on HBO is so much fun despite feeling overly familiar. “Ghetto Klown” is the latest entry in the New York actor’s exhaustive self-documentation, this show focusing on his transitions from Queens-dwelling cutup (he did Foghorn Leghorn impressions on the 7 train) to movie and Broadway star.
A filmed version of the 2011 one-man Broadway show directed by Fisher Stevens, “Ghetto Klown” sees Leguizamo careening around the space with his usual high intensity, busting out various dance moves and contorting himself into animated impersonations of family, friends and actors (his Al Pacino is dead-on).
Never one to shy away from dishing dirt, the actor is at his funniest during anecdotes about his early movie days, like an experience on the set of Brian De Palma’s “Casualties of War” that saw the overly-method Sean Penn slapping Leguizamo in the face over many, many takes (in a scene that was, subsequently, cut from the film). Or mocking his own pallor in his first big part, on the TV show “Miami Vice,” after a relative advised him to stay out of the sun so as to be as white as possible. (A screen behind the actor serves as a helpful visual aide for many of these references.)
His well-honed Pacino impression comes from a confrontation during the filming of “Carlito’s Way,” in which the frustrated veteran actor yelled at Leguizamo for being clownish and urged him, rather harshly, to stop over-acting.
He’s at his best when depicting events — and people — that are pretty firmly in the past. Stories from his first marriage, to a fiercely feminist poet, are more well-defined than those from his second (which is still intact).
And his indignation at the cancellation of his short-lived variety show, 1995’s “House of Buggin’,” feels pretty justified, as he shows an ahead-of-its-time and genuinely funny sketch about a street fight between a modern-day gang and the Sharks from “West Side Story.”
Leguizamo’s struggles with depression are understandably harder to animate for an audience. He puts together a video montage of his go-tos during an episode — sleep, drink, caffeinate, masturbate — but due to his truthfulness about how cyclical the episodes can be, he ends up coming back to this rather too many times.
It’s a criticism that also applies to the show at large: As engaging and insightful as he is, let’s hope Leguizamo is now looking beyond his own back story for material.