If you "get" the point of this show, you don't have to see it.

But that would mean missing Peter Ruocco in a highly engaging 75-minute monologue — "Thom Pain (based on nothing)," by Will Eno. And Ruocco disarmingly delivers a solid solo performance that will leave you laughing, puzzled and irritated.

Imagine a likable guy in the Dick Cavett or Jon Stewart tradition, wearing a badly put together black suit and rambling through painful biographical anecdotes in a prelude to a magic act that never gets started.

What's the big trick in a magic act? Making things disappear, right? The key message buried just below the obvious in "Thom Pain," is that there is a life outside the black box that the audience has voluntarily sealed itself into for the length of this performance. Ruocco urges us to go live it.

Early on, someone from the audience (likely a plant) gets the message and — radiating irritation — stomps across the front of the stage and through the exit like a reverse Judas goat showing the rest of us a way out.

The audience doesn't follow. Hawai'i audiences generally are too polite to leave a too-obvious performance. Besides, in that theater, there's no way to slip out unnoticed.

Ruocco rewards those who stay. "You're being very patient," he soothes, and rewards us with a string of memories — mostly from an unpleasant childhood and a failed relationship.

The spoken images are strong. A beloved dog is electrocuted by lapping water charged by a downed power line. A series of a couple snapshots deteriorates into images of stick figures as the relationship fails. "I disappeared into her. And unable to find me, she left."

Physical images are even stronger. Ruocco sucks helium from a balloon and uses the altered pitch of his voice to cite a news article about a horse that died from AIDS. He circulates through the audience looking for unwilling volunteers. He blows his nose into a handkerchief and uses it to represent his brain.

The best he has to offer is his own life failure, and he's aware of the shortcomings. "Say you saw a guy who was trying. I'm trying, man." It's a last-ditch effort, sustained by Ruocco's ability to remain likable despite his annoyances.

As the show nears the one-hour mark, Ruocco's attempts become increasingly desperate. He repeatedly concludes, he successively wraps up, he indicates that he has nothing left and becomes agitated that he's been unable to deliver a meaningful message.

He practically begs us to leave the theater and go find a life.

The moment becomes something of a perverse "est" seminar — a popular 1970's self-help session in which trainers bullied audiences toward a heightened sense of "beingness." Here, playwright and performer plead with us to leave instead of intimidating us to stay.