LOS ANGELES—My Mother’s Italian, My Father’s Jewish, & I’m in Therapy is a traditional one-man show about a man coping with his dysfunctional family.  What makes it fresh is Steve Solomon, who is hilarious, LOL funny, and sweet.  Using a variety of voices, Solomon represents his quirky family with loving humor and without a trace of malice.  Which makes you love them—and him.

 

The show is set in his psychiatrist’s office.  His THIRD psychiatrist.  His first psychiatrist had given up on him with the rueful comment, “Life is not for everyone…”  His second had revealed, after three years in which he had not uttered a word, that he did not speak English.  His third was Dr. A-S-S-H-O-L-E, pronounced “As-HO-lee”…

 

Solomon’s voices bring both sides of his multi-ethnic family to life.  In addition to his parents, there are both grandmothers (usually fighting with each other), his mother’s brother, Uncle Paulie, Aunt Millie, Uncle Frankie, and Sis, his four-packs-a-day sister with the hoarse voice and the chronic cough.  They are all crazy in their own individual ways, and everyone will recognize them as doppelgangers of their own family crazies. 

What makes them unique to Solomon’s world is the unexpected spin he puts on the things they say.  As many a comic philosopher has noted, the essence of Jewish humor is its unexpected twists, and in this respect Solomon confirms that he is much more his father’s son than his mother’s.

In one insane shtick he portrays his Jewish grandmother explaining the kashrut laws to his incredulous Italian grandmother.  ("You mean you can mix an egg with milk until it hatches, and then you can't?" his Italian grandmother roars).  In Solomon's grandmothers' hands, the kashrut laws would leave even the Rambam speechless.

He speaks of his marriage, a union that seemed to be doomed from the start:  his wife used to introduce herself as “Steve’s future widow.”  He, on the other hand, would introduce her as “my first wife.”

 

He provides a vivid portrait of his father: “At 75, his body looked like a melted candle.”  And he speaks of a self-help group for non-stop talkers called On and On and On Anon.

 

Solomon is a funny, likeable, lump of a man who obviously enjoys what he’s doing.  And so will you.

 

My Mother’s Italian, My Father’s Jewish & I’m in Therapy will run Tuesdays through Sundays until April 9th at the comfortable Brentwood Theatre, 11301 Wilshire Blvd., on the Veterans Administration Grounds.  Follow the signs.  And the sound of laughter.