[Woody’s [rating: 4]
Ron Tobin in “My Mother’s Italian, My Father’s Jewish & I’m in Therapy!” Photo by Rudy Lens.
Actor-comic Ron Tobin has mastered, I’d guess, at least 17 voices and 42 verbal sound effects.
Or maybe it’s the other way around.
Plus, give or take, 28 accents.
He can instantly change faces — and identities — by distorting his mouth or brow and scrunching up or widening his eyes.
His elastic body and swinging hands can conjure up hysterically dysfunctional and hysterically funny men, women, dogs and a cat.
During a one-man show at the Del Valle Theater — “My Mother’s Italian, My Father’s Jewish & I’m in Therapy!” — Tobin portrayed, in quick succession (and with exquisite comedic timing) a nasal stewardess, a cabbie from a Middle East country, a guru from India, an 83-year-old Jamaican gated community guard, a phlegm-ish uncle — as well as the constantly bickering title characters based on writer-comic Steve Solomon’s ethnically divided parents.
I’m normally a tough audience for comedians. But Tobin made me laugh out loud repeatedly.
The show isn’t seamless, though.
It’s uneven, and may lean too heavily on potty humor.
It also becomes fleetingly awkward when a singular poignant grandma moment unexpectedly interferes with the cresting comedy.
And some of its gags and situations are older than Moses.
Like the clichéd notion of his wife loving sex — until the second they wed.
Promotional materials call the monologue “one part lasagna, one part kreplach and two parts Prozac,” and say it’s really all about leaving dinner “with heartburn and a headache.”
But I’m pleased to report “My Mother’s Italian” is much funnier than its publicity.
I couldn’t begin to count all the one-liners crammed into the two-act, 100-minute show that ran for two years in New York City and has toured internationally in more than 200 cites since.
What absolutely worked for me were the numerous set-ups about the aging process — especially hearing loss (maybe you had to be there, but mom hears “Lebanese” instead of “lesbian”) and bodily non-functions.
And the obvious ethnic jibes (“What are genitals?” “Those are the people who aren’t Jewish”).
Most of the jokes, such as those, play vastly better on stage than they read in a review. And the laughter they provoke is appropriately contagious.
A guy behind me saw the show in San Diego with Solomon and found it side-splitting enough to see again with Tobin.
He couldn’t stop laughing the second time around.
The cackles of several women near him were so raucous they nearly drowned out the next three punch-lines.
Tobin had learned his script well. But he also inserted an amusing smidgeon of reality. In a five-minute encore, he riffed about having gotten lost while trying to find the Walnut Creek theater where I saw him perform — after I, too, got lost.
“Tell your friends,” he mockingly pleaded, “not just about the show — about how to get here.”
“My Mother’s Italian, My Father’s Jewish & I’m in Therapy!” will run through March 29 at the Del Valle Theater, 1963 Tice Valley Road, Walnut Creek. Evening performances, Wednesdays and Thursdays, 7 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 6 p.m. Matinees, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays, 2 p.m. Tickets: $45 to $65. Information: www.LesherARTScenter.org or 1-925-943-7469.
Contact Woody Weingarten at voodee@sbcglobal.net or at www.vitalitypress.com/
