There’s a terrific new book out about the famous theatrical riot that occurred at Astor Place in 1849, the climax of a rivalry between two famous actors, one British, the other American. Something all actors held in common then, however, was that when audiences were rude or disruptive, they would slip into a pantomime to continue the performance. This raises the curious idea of what Macbeth, for example, might look like performed without words. Billy the Mime’s AmericaLoveSexDeath bursts with tales as richly layered as Shakespeare, all derived from contemporary events and themes.

AmericaLoveSexDeath is Billy the Mime’s first full New York theatrical production; he was the hit of the 2006 New York International Fringe Festival, and memorably on screen in the 2005 Paul Provenza film The Aristocrats. Not a lot has changed in his act in the interim: segments such as “JFK, Jr. We Hardly Knew Ye”; “Close to Her: Karen Carpenter”; “A Night in San Francisco: 1979”; “A Night with Jeffrey Dahmer”; “A Day Called 9/11”; “The Sixties”; “The Priest and the Altar Boy”; “Terry Schiavo, Adieu”; “Thomas & Sally—A Night at Monticello”; and “Christopher Reeve—A Super Man” were all seen in the Fringe run as well.

What gives AmericaLoveSexDeath its allure, though, is that each piece has deepened; perhaps with the Flea Theater’s bare stage and steeply raked seating offering better sightlines, Billy the Mime appears more able to carefully explore the fringes (pardon the pun) of his various characters’ emotions and transitions. He relies greatly on irony, on expectations met or exceeded: In “World War II,” he delivers the political and military iconography of Hitler and Roosevelt (the Nazi salute, the long cigarette holder) while also evoking the earth-shattering effects of war on the average civilian.

Other pieces seem crafted for tours de force. “The Sixties,” which as an idea for a pantomime seems as ludicrous as one on Macbeth, trades entirely on economy: Using a single gesture, Billy the Mime offers up Ed Sullivan and the Beatles (all four of them), Cassius Clay (and Muhammad Ali), Dr. Spock (of Star Trek, not the child psychologist), a child toying with an Etch A Sketch, the Rolling Stones, Stevie Wonder, the phenomenon of draft-card burning and the fighting of Vietnam—total elapsed time, 6 or 7 minutes. Here, too, AmericaLoveSexDeath is about expectations met or exceeded: you sense the audience working to identify each cultural landmark as Billy the Mime touched upon it.

In the interest of not wanting to increase Americans’ use of antidepressants, not every sketch is as sad as one about the gay man who has sex with everyone in San Francisco in 1979 and dies of AIDS, or what happened to an ordinary banker in the Twin Towers 6 years ago. (This may be why he also omitted a new piece, “Virginia Tech 4/16/07.”) These sweeter bits, charming as they are, make you miss the gut-punches. “The Clown and the Beautiful Woman” is very much a crowd-pleaser, and it’s the sole audience-interactive vignette of the night. Billy the Mime selected a woman for it who was game for anything: As the music segued from style to style, she kept up, at one point executing a modified Lindy with the fearlessness of a 21-year-old bobby-soxer.

I simply preferred watching Billy the Mime, say, as Jeffrey Dahmer—luring, drugging, killing, slicing and eating his victims, all the while attempting to humanize Dahmer’s impossibly inhuman tale. Or testing pantomimic boundaries during “The Priest and the Altar Boy,” which requires no explanation. During that skit, I heard someone whisper—if you can believe this—“Oh, no he didn’t.” Oh, yes he did.

Through Sept. 29. The Flea Theater, 41 White St. (betw. Church St. & Franklin Pl.), 212-352-3101; Tues.-Sat. 7; Thurs.-Sat. 10, $35.