Judy Gold examines her life through her favorite sitcoms in new one-woman show (photo by T Charles Erickson)
DR2 Theatre
103 East 15th St. at 20 Union Sq. East
Extended through October 22, $65
www.judygold.com
Newark-born comedian Judy Gold was raised on sitcoms, and there’s nothing she’d like more than getting a sitcom of her own. She’s tried over the years, without success, as detailed in her charming, entertaining one-woman production, The Judy Show: My Life as a Sitcom. On a stage that mimics a sitcom set — with the addition of hundreds of images from famous sitcoms lining the walls and ceiling — Gold enters through a door like so many sitcom characters do, then directly addresses the audience for the next eighty minutes, taking occasional interludes to play snippets of famous sitcom theme songs on the piano. Gold tells the very funny story of her life from her early days in Clark, New Jersey, raised by an overbearing, Nazi-obsessed mother and a calmer father, through her college days, the emergence of her sexual orientation, her relationship with Schwendy (Gold’s first long-term girlfriend refused to give her permission to use her real name in the show), and her current home life, living with Sharon Callahan, a Jewish therapist from Rochester whom she met in a magazine singles column, and Gold’s two children with Schwendy. While Gold thinks a sitcom about a six-foot-three Jewish lesbian mother of two boys is, well, comic gold, she has yet to convince any network, represented here by a disembodied male voice. Gold talks about many of her favorite shows, including The Brady Brunch, Room 222, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, All in the Family, and The Facts of Life, as she shares the facts of her life and elicits continued audience response, becoming playfully angry if they don’t get a particular joke or reference. She supplements her tale with family photographs as well as images from the sitcoms she’s talking about and an endless supply of tsouris. Written by Gold and Kate Moira Ryan and directed by Amanda Charlton, The Judy Show, which has just been extended through October 22 at the DR2 Theatre in Union Square, is a whimsical, wonderfully self-effacing evening of theater, filled with good times and happy days, just taking life as it comes, one day at a time, with no commercial breaks. And maybe, just maybe, she’s gonna make it after all.