A Personal Look at Love’s Byways and State Bylaws

“Same-sex binational couple facing deportation.”

In six words, words found on a flier currently available in the lobby of Highways Performance Space, you have the story being lived by Highways co-founder Tim Miller and his Australian partner, Alistair McCartney.

Once McCartney’s U.S. student visa expires, Miller and McCartney may be forced to relocate to a country with more gay-friendly immigration laws. Such is the cold reality underpinning “Glory Box,” writer-director Miller’s latest solo performance now at Highways.

In it, the ingratiating Venice Beach activist with the half-mast eyes makes sense of his six-year relationship, in light of crushes and lovers past and politics present. The results are uneven. Miller may be standing so close to this material--how could he not?--that he can’t always distinguish the sharpest and shrewdest insights from the easier, broader ones.

Yet it’s bracing to see a show with such undeniable hard-news currency, coming from such a deeply personal perspective.

The news peg is the “Limits on Marriage Initiative,” sponsored by Sen. William “Pete” Knight (R-Palmdale), on the March 7 state ballot. Proposition 22 would prohibit California from recognizing same-sex marriages performed in other states--even though no states presently allow such unions. Punitive? Hostile? Miller says yea on both counts, and this undeniably nasty initiative gives Miller plenty of fuel.

“Glory Box” takes its title from the Australian phrase for “hope chest.” The object itself is central to Miller’s observations, as he recalls “the delicious cedary smell” of the wooden chest belonging to his mother. As he did at age 5, early on in the show Miller strips down and crawls inside--illustrating Miller’s general belief in spicing things up with what he calls “a bit of cheerful nudity.”

In this context, the hope chest becomes a repository for every homophobic slur, each indignity and loss endured by gays and lesbians everywhere. Miller uses the symbol also as a means of expressing hope for the future of his own relationship. A previous Miller show (and essay collection), “Shirts & Skin,” relayed the London meeting of Miller and McCartney. “Glory Box” alludes to what Miller terms “a Sears catalog’s worth of differences” between the two men--and also to the glue binding them, despite those differences.

Miller’s material tends to score when it folds political outrage with sheer bitchery, as when we hear of Tim and Alistair hogging all the pillows on an airplane flight. “More than our share, I know,” Miller says. “But we suffer in so many other ways.”

The solo lands on a scene at Los Angeles International Airport, in which lover is torn from lover--a portent of things to come? Something’s off with the tone of the writing and the performing here, though. Miller can’t resist pumping up the melodrama. The honest suspense of the situation doesn’t come off entirely honestly, what with the dastardly Immigration and Naturalization Service goons suddenly talking like Conrad Veidt in “Casablanca.”

Miller’s better than that, in the main. At its best, “Glory Box” is the work of a wicked wit on an activist’s mission.

* “Glory Box,” Highways Performance Space, 1651 18th St. (north of Olympic Boulevard), Santa Monica. Friday and Saturday, 8:30 p.m. Ends Saturday. $15. (310) 315-1459. Also: Monday at 8 p.m. at UC Santa Barbara, UCSB Campbell Hall. $8, $5 students. (805) 893-3535.

Running time: 1 hour, 10 minutes.

Written, directed and performed by Tim Miller. Technical director Jeff Cain.