“This is me!” belts Mario Cantone in the opening number of his new solo show, “Laugh Whore.” He refers not to his face, but to a picture of his face: He’s holding up his headshot, right in front of him.

For the next few hours, this is what we get. On one hand, Showbiz Mario, the raging, bitchy pop-culture maven, who whirls through devastating impressions of Faye Dunaway, Sammy Davis, Marlon Brando, Michael Jackson, Elvis, and Judy Garland (obviously).

On the other, there’s Little Mario, a son of Long Island, from a big, Italian family full of big, Italian people. This seems like a vivid family, what with the velvet walls, and Mom burning down the house for insurance money, and the bookies in the living room. Mr. Cantone seems intent on telling us about his entire family; this being an Italian family, it takes a while.

Mr. Cantone has a lot of rage, and a lot of love – angry love, anyway – and so there’s a lot of him to be had at the Cort Theatre. For hard-core fans of his raucous onstage persona, no amount of mugging, exploding, singing, and dancing will suffice. For the rest of us, two hours and 20 minutes is more than enough amusement, thank you.

When the routine gets a little stale, you fall back on anthropology. How in the world does he make that sound with his voice? Did his ancestors bring some gene for cast-iron vocal cords with them from the old world? If he and Harvey Fierstein had a frog calling contest, who would win?

We’ve had plenty of chances to witness Mr. Cantone’s vocal apparatus in action lately. He was in “Assassins” and “The Violet Hour” on Broadway, and played a recurring role in “Sex and the City.” If you haven’t had the pleasure, I’m not sure that I can describe the sound. The nearest earthly equivalent to it may be a radial saw. When Mr. Cantone is calm – setting up a joke, say – it sounds like the motor getting warm. Then he plunges into a joke, or builds into an outraged punch line, and the roaring and squealing becomes positively symphonic. Depending on how much his target exasperates him, it can sound like a blade tearing its way through lumber, or piles of carpet, or a zoo.

With dark hair, eyes, and clothes, Mr. Cantone does not exude a lot of sunshine. He greets human comedy with something like Lewis Black’s rage. His targets don’t tend to be especially exotic. Cabbies from the Middle East take some abuse, as do the terrorists. “They can blow anthrax up my ass with a straw,” shouts Mr. Cantone, explaining that even that wouldn’t force him out of the subways or New York. “Cats,” long absent from the city, still takes its licks. “Kiss my jellicle ass,” he says.

Every now and then he hits on a really inspired idea. The Jim Morrison Christmas medley is funnier than you’d think, and the foul-mouthed kids at the school for the deaf are funnier than they ought to be. His grand finale is a long rendition of women who didn’t get to perform in “The Vagina Monologues” but should have. It takes a special imagination to come up with what Barbra Streisand, the first lady, or Bette Davis (after the stroke) would say about their secret places.

Mr. Cantone has retained director Joe Mantello to impose some order on the evening. The second act, where most of the family reminiscence occurs, shows his sculptor’s touch. Still, it’s not clear why Mr. Cantone needed a Broadway house for what is, in essence, a standup routine with songs. Even the people who leave the show laughing may wonder if there isn’t something a little more theatrical that might deserve the real estate.

***

They need look no further than 42nd Street. Playwrights Horizons has produced Neal Bell’s “Spatter Pattern,” the best thing New York has seen this season. The show has gotten warm notices from most of my colleagues, including the Sun’s astute Helen Shaw. They’ve pointed out that the story is right out of the noir catalog.

A washed-up screenwriter, grappling with the death of his lover, takes an apartment in a dingy section of New York. His neighbor happens to be a college professor accused of murdering one of his students. The writer, Dunn (Peter Frechette), knows a good story when he sees it, so tries to cozy up to the teacher, an ex-Navy-SEAL named Tate (Darren Pettie). Dunn is attracted to Tate, but the real spark comes from the threat of violence, from Mr. Pettie’s menace: He seems capable, and perfectly willing, to rend Dunn limb from limb.

Leave aside for a moment its message, implications, themes: Like “Boys and Girls,” “Living Out,” or “Take Me Out,” the play tells a terrific story; it sweeps you along. Of course, there’s no guarantee it would survive a transfer. The small stage at Playwrights Horizons seats fewer than 100; the Cort seats more than 1,000. A move like this would be hazardous, because the production is also a triumph of atmosphere.

Director Michael Greif, doing his best work in years, has conjured a dark, frenetic tone, like “Sweet Smell of Success” with a dash of “Touch of Evil.” Mark Wendland’s set (low ceiling, pivoting walls) and Kevin Adams’s lighting (one lurid shadow after another) keep you off-balance. The show really works because of how it sounds. Jill B.C. DuBoff’s sound design fills the dead spots with bustle, and commotion; Michael Friedman’s score, heavy on the bop, keeps the pulse high. The show’s tempo is New York.

Some feel that the play unravels at the end. True, it doesn’t have the breathless finale a classic noir would. But bop is a good way to think about what Mr. Bell has done: It is to early jazz what his play is to noir. For Mr. Bell has used noir only as far as his purpose requires. The understated grace of the final scenes shows that he’s willing to depart from familiar melodies, the better to explore the underlying chords: in this case, survivor’s guilt.

Early in the play, when Tate claims that he’s innocent, Dunn replies, “That must be nice. I wish I could say the same.” Mr. Frechette (doing his best work in years) plays the guilt ridden Dunn like a stifled sob; he crumbles beautifully. His acting in the last scene is heartbreaking, and no less thrilling for being quiet. I hope you get to see it.