Multicultural shtick in ‘My Mother’s Italian My Father’s Jewish…’

By Donald H. Harrison

SAN DIEGO –My Mother’s Italian, My Father’s Jewish, I’m in Therapy!  is a stand-up comedy act in which comedian Ron Tobin gets to sit down at a piano bench and in an arm chair—supposedly located in the empty office of a psychiatrist—while performing his shtick.  And it’s good that this script by and about writer Steve Solomon calls for the actor to occasionally sit, because in this one-man show, Tobin reels off the jokes at a pace that would exhaust even a pre-schooler.  He imitates, in nearly non-stop fashion, the dialects and gestures of a large international cast of characters.  Tobin works so hard, he perspires under the Lyceum Theatre lights by the middle of the first act. 

There is one extended bit in the second half of the play that is on theme and hilarious.  The kashrut-challenged Solomon keeps mixing up the dairy and meat dishes, and his wife—once a Woodstock hippie but now very Orthodox—orders him to bury the dishes.  One night, after quarreling with his wife, he takes the dishes to the back yard and digs a hole for them, as neighbors watch suspiciously from their window.   I’ll leave the story there, but you can see the potential for humor offered by cultural misunderstandings.

At another point in the play, he recalls asking a grandmother for help on his sex education homework.  Pretty hard of hearing, she offered confused answers to his questions.   Q: What are genitals?  A: People who are not Jewish!    And later, he compares the different ways Jews and Italians try to prove they are not lying.  The Jew:  If I’m not telling the truth, let me drop dead right here.   The Italian:  If I’m not telling the truth, my cousin Vinnie should drop dead (or maybe worse).

Go to any comedy club, and you’ll notice that jokes have different audiences. Some people will sit stone-faced while their neighbors laugh at one joke, and then another joke will convulse them with laughter and leave their neighbors staring straight ahead.   So, I recognize that my tastes in humor are not necessarily like yours, the readers’.  There were a lot of off-theme jokes in My Mother’s Italian, My Father’s Jewish, I’m in Therapy!  that seemed pretty juvenile.  The 90-minute show included a lot of scatological jokes that, from my point of view, could easily have been cut.  Tobin imitated nearly every embarrassing noise a human or canine body can emit.  Other jokes in the script seemed old and terribly worn.  Still others, you arrived at the punch line well before Tobin did.   And too many jokes, in my opinion, made fun of the geriatric set.   Hey, Steve Solomon, maybe it’s time for a rewrite!

Overall, however, the Andrew Rogow-directed production provides an evening of fun, and while you are at the Lyceum Theatre, you can catch in the lobby the exhibition of art works by two well-known members of our San Diego Jewish community: Jacqueline Jacobs and Vivian Ressler.  My Mother’s Italian, My Father’s Jewish, I’m in Therapy!  will run through August into September at the theatre, which is located on the bottom level of Horton Plaza Shopping Center, by the obelisk.

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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World.  He may be contacted at donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com