By Lou Powsner
Laughter is exploding in the aisles at the Little Shubert Theater on West 42nd Street, where Steve Solomon paces his staged living room; exploding laughter up and down the aisles. It sounds like “Bellies-a-poppin,” as he paces his pretentious living-room, graphically narrating his ‘tsurises’ (troubles to you). Like it says in the title, this Broadway show takes us through the family’s conflicts, misunderstandings…and both. Steve Solomon – the one man cast – patrols the corners of his living room stage, often waving hands wildly, as he cries out the two conflicts that drove him into therapy…his Italian mother, and his Jewish father. He constantly flails his hands as he pours out his woes to a full-house audience, to have their bellies throb incessantly; bathing from accent to accent; or misunderstanding each other, to both. On the stage, the one-man (and many accounted) Steve Solomon walks us around his living-room, constantly telling us how his Italian mother can’t contend with how she can keep a kosher kitchen, when she waves her arms flailingly asking her hubby, “How can I keep kosher when you can’t tell me why a crab is not kosher, while a salmon is. Don’t I buy them both in the same fish store? But you tryin’ to tell me what we can eat, and crabs or clams should stay out of my kitchen…my house? You can make some sense out of this? I cannot.” When we watched Steve Solomon prance the stage, we saw the late great, so-popular Sam Levinson re-incarnated. Like Sam Levinson, this one-man star, Steve Solomon, had been a school teacher, opening his career writing on Sheepshead Bay chalkboards where hw taught school and initiated his comedic powers sitting on his teachers desk. “My Mother’s Italian, My Father’s Jewish,” comes into New York’s stage, here at the Little Shubert Theater, after fine runs in the many corridors of America and Canada, with stages in Ft. Lauderdale, Los Angeles, Atlantic City, Toronto, Montreal…and always to tummy-tickled, receptive audiences as we saw on our own 42nd Street strip, with close to a full house at a mid-afternoon matinee during the heights of a holiday shopping season. The mid-afternoon holiday traffic was so tied up, we couldn’t believe so many made it to a matinee instead of seasonal shopping madness. We learn that Steve Solomon really started his many voices, shifting from male (his dad), to his screechily accented mom. Always each are in unusual dialect, and Steve – on stage – shifts his one-man show from one base voice to a screechy soprano in a most uniquely incessant conversational banter, as we orally referee the ultra-comical on-stage banter that fills the theaters rafters. Interestingly, we listened to audience comments at shows end, as many of the heartily laughing viewers queued-up at his merchandise sales/counter in the outer lobby, where he gave an added performance of his multi-sexual, inter-changing accents, for the added delights of his “post-show” performance. His multi-ethnic accents are accredited to his Sheepshead Bay training as a teacher. If your belly needs massaging, you can get it done just sitting in the orchestral firing-lines of real “Hamish” humor. Steve Solomon is a belly-exercising new stage performer; so very New Yorkish. See him; the one-man performer moving up to the top. Wait and see. (P.S.) It’s the time of year to wish all our readers and Graphic loyalists, a very fine New Year, enjoying and appreciating good health, straight from the heart of Speak Out’s Lou Powsner. Amen.
