N o one tells a story like Christopher Brett Bailey. One minute he’s buying eggs at a gas station and the next he’s careening down the highway with the devil, the car deliberately swerving to increase their body count. Though it doesn’t quite match the motor-mouthed intensity or blinding climax of his 2014 beat-poet monologue, This Is How We Die , this live reading of his surreal 2023 novella is a free-wheeling piece of storytelling, vividly and viciously told.

There’s no music nor much set. It’s just Brett Bailey reading from his script at a table, slurping and hissing and whispering into the microphone as he weaves a story of modern America and a man literally dancing with the devil.…