My Mother's Italian, My Father's Jewish, and I'm in Therapy!

My Mother's Italian, My Father's Jewish, and I'm in Therapy!“I wasn’t going to end up like any of them,” says Steve Solomon of his family. They’re crazy, all of them. But he’s not going to end up like them. No way. That’s why he’s in therapy, right?The narrator and star of the one-man show, My Mother’s Italian, My Father’s Jewish and I’m in Therapy!, Solomon performs a 90 minute show about the insanity of his multi-cultural relatives. Waiting in the office of his therapist, Solomon begins his story begins with his mother and father’s meeting in Europe at the end of World War II. He shares stories, acts out scenes, and simply shares the lunacy of his family with the audience, frequently stating that he feels better after talking and wonders if he actually needs to be in therapy after all.Peppered with anecdotes, Solomon’s script includes such sound bites as his mother’s perspective of Jewish holidays: “They tried to kill us. God saved us. Let’s eat,” and a few somewhat embarrassing exchanges between his hard of hearing parents and himself, including confusion about genitals vs. Gentiles and condoms instead of condos.While the script itself is fairly satisfying, it is Solomon’s performance that truly carries the show. His seamless shifting from character to character, complete with shifts in voice pitch, accents and mannerisms, appears almost effortless. He performs as almost every member of his family, including his Italian mother, his Jewish father who thinks that every problem can be solved by Chinese food, his sister who is a compulsive smoker accompanied by a raspy voice and hacking cough, and his own son, going through puberty and experiencing major changes in his voice’s pitch.Solomon’s performance is energetic, and it garners many laughs from the audience, but some of the jokes do feel clichéd. Advice such as, “Never go to bed mad. Stay up and fight,” feel dated, as do him saying that pregnancy changed his wife for the better: “You’d better do this, you’d better do that....” The well-worn jokes still elicit laughter, but sometimes more from the force of habit than actual comedy. When he discusses his ex-wife - a woman "who used the smoke alarm as a meal timer" - and laments their lack of a sex life post-nuptials - "She said, 'Touch me where I'm most sensitive.' So I took her to my mother's house,” - one can’t help but wonder where these jokes were heard before.Performed in 90 minutes, without an intermission, Solomon’s show is a satisfying look into the lunacies of another person’s life. It is clever and humorous, and also reassuring. If nothing else, your family might not be as crazy as his. And if they are, maybe the two of you can team up to perform as a duo.