Steve Solomon’s Cannolis, Latkes & Guilt! The Therapy Continues…
Steve Solomon left a career as a physics teacher and assistant superintendent of schools on Long Island to follow his heart. It told him to “become an impoverished comedy writer and performer,” but it didn’t quite work out that way. His first show, My Mother’s Italian, My Father’s Jewish, and I’m in Therapy, became one of the longest-running one man shows in Broadway history. His shows are currently touring the United States, Canada, and South Africa and have won both critical acclaim and awards.
With his latest show, Cannolis, Latkes & Guilt!The Therapy Continues, Steve continues his defense against those who tried to drive him into therapy and succeeded. Each of the 20 or so characters is someone you know, have known, or want to forget. They are brought to life by Steve, using the voices and dialects that they possess in real life. Close your eyes and you would swear there were two or three people chatting on stage.
A Brooklyn native, Steve grew up in the multi-ethnic neighborhood of Sheepshead Bay. It was the perfect training ground for learning dialects. As the class clown and a very authentic-sounding Chinese restaurant delivery boy, Steve learned at an early age how to use his gift for mimicry to his advantage. He also realized that he loved to write jokes and submitted them to periodicals, friends, and stand-up comics he knew in the business. With the advent of e-mail, his jokes began touring the world. To this day, he receives versions of his own jokes.
People who have seen Steve’s shows leave the theater identifying with the characters. “It’s the nuances that make the show work,” he said. “It’s the thing that Pop mumbles, like the time I asked him about marriage. ‘Dad, why do people get married?’ Dad responded, ‘Marriage is like a bank account. You put in, you take it out and you lose interest!’”
With each of Steve’s shows, we get greater insights into the personalities of the dozens of characters we meet along the way: their personalities, or lack thereof, their feeding habit and their instinctive ability to turn joy into relentless but hysterical chaos. It keeps us laughing and makes an evening with Steve Solomon a laugh fest from start to finish. Prepare for that laughter, some tears, and a lot of delight at someone else’s family dysfunction; all brought to life by the comedic magic of Steve Solomon.
“My greatest joy comes from watching the audiences holding their sides and laughing as they identify with the family chaos on stage,” Steve said.
So, come. You’ll eat, you’ll laugh, and you’ll make your mother happy. It’s less expensive than therapy and a lot more fun.