Josh Kornbluth wants you to think about Democracy. With an election less than a month away, that's not exactly surprising.

But Kornbluth isn't trying to get you to cast a ballot for "his guy," and isn't here to feed you platitudes about one vote making a difference. And that's part of what makes Citizen Josh, his one man show wrapping up its short run at Arena Stage, so refreshing. Kornbluth is just chatting easily about his personal experiences with democracy, both the big-concept democracy, and more frequently, the way it translates into ordinary life for a man hoping for better equipment on his local playground, or getting accidentally mixed up with some aggressive PTA leaders. And lest you think Kornbluth is here to lecture, keep this in mind -- the whole project, a one-man monologue he's been touring the country with -- is his attempt to finish up his college thesis, which he's finally gotten around to doing 28 years after graduation.

Kornbluth is disarming and self-deprecating, which makes his points go down rather easily. Unlike many performers who command the stage themselves for 90 minutes, he's not breaking into a sweat trying to wow us with his versatile range of characters, or charm us with overwhelming charisma. Kornbluth has a very everyman appeal that, while engaging, doesn't feel showy. He's a comfortable companion for the evening, even when walking us through pie charts of demographic data about our audience as sort of an instructional epilogue to the piece.

But the man can definitely tell a story. He does such a good job setting the scene of his Princeton years (spent raptly listening to his favorite politics professor, and basically slacking off the rest of the time) that you can easily put yourself not only in the setting, but in the actual mindset of a college student. And he painstakingly recreates the atmosphere of the premature wing of the hospital when his baby brother was born, so realistically that one can picture the child in the palm of his hand, fragile and struggling -- the realism makes the listener that much more vulnerable as we wonder whether the boy will make it.

Lest the story become too autobiographical, Kornbluth also challenges us to remember back eight years ago to the Bush v. Gore era. As he recalls his own apathy toward how that battle would work itself out -- "Really, how bad could it get?" he asks about an impending Bush presidency - the work suddenly feels timely indeed. Election apathy has its price -- and Kornbluth drives the point home while never seeming like he's delivering a polemic.

Citizen Josh runs through Oct. 26 at Arena's Crystal City location. Tickets are available online.