With this one-woman tour de force Carolyn Michel proves again why she is a major favorite of area audiences: She takes them in, as if sharing heartfelt info, and they take her to their hearts. This time, she's a surrogate for co-author Sherry Glaser who has members of her family telling of their intimate interminglings. That Family Secrets evolved from a series of autobiographically based comic monologues explains why no particular situation causes the five characters to reveal themselves or their relationships. Still, they offer a kind of plot as they tell and act out, with humorous embellishments, how they worked their way through conflicts and adversities.
Beginning with traditional-minded family head Mort, the characters get more interesting. He's pretty much the solid, middle-aged, New York Jewish, grey-suited businessman (whose accented voice Michel has down pat). Accustomed to the quirks of a wife with whom he lives contentedly, he also loves his young adult children. His problem: accepting youngest daughter Fern's lesbian, child-of-nature lifestyle.
"Crazy" singing, curly-blond Bev talks to her dog as if she's its mother. She regards herself as the child of a crazy mom and her heir, especially of breakdowns and consummate Momism. Highlight of her story is her thinking, during a hospitalization, that she's Jesus' mother. What a path she's taken to law school!
Michel throws herself, as if into the universe, into the role of Kahari (nee Fern), child now of the Earth as much as of Mort and Bev. Though her lesbian lover has become just her close friend, Kahari details their menstruation ritual, replacing "men" with "fem" in the adjective.
As Kahari decided to be a mother, she united with a Hispanic man (later to be her husband). Michel's longest, most vivid portrayal is of Kahari in labor. It is either the funniest or most labored, depending on one's tastes and -- as in a natural delivery -- endurance.
To say that love child Sandra is distraught by her mother and mod high school life would be an understatement. With her swaying ponytail, black leather vest, big athletic shoes, water bottle, and complaints about her weight, tense teen Sandra resents her mom's "annoying voice" and any attempts at discipline. Michel reproduces Sandra's first sexual experience as tastefully as possible, though it is anything but tasteful.
When Grandma Rose comes on, Michel elicits spontaneous audience joining-in as she sings "Hava Nagila." She can make physical infirmities laughable. Old, gray, but with blouse full of flowers like her name, Rose is now anything but the suicidal post office retiree she'd been in New York.
Brought by son Milton to California, she has met and married a simpatico senior. Her description of their wedding is frosting on the cake of a winning performance, expertly guided throughout by director Howard Millman.
Lauren Feldman's cozy set with clothes rack beside make-up vanity table, a central easy chair, and a bed to one side is supremely functional and of great aid to the character transitions are costumes, wigs, changing accent lighting, and musical transitions and related sound.
