Marga Gomez: So old, so funny
EXTENDED THROUGH DEC. 17!
Marga Gomez gets a horizontal groove on in her new solo show Not Getting Any Younger at The Marsh in San Francisco. Photos by David Wilson
Though hardly a senior citizen, Marga Gomez needs to talk about her age. That doesn't mean she'll tell you her age, but it does mean she'll regale you with her thoughts on the aging process for 80 minutes in her new solo theatrical venture, Not Getting Any Younger at The Marsh in San Francisco.
Probably best known as a stand-up comic, Gomez says she's considered a pioneer for being one of the first out lesbian comics. But she hates being called a pioneer because it makes her sound old – like she traveled to gigs in a covered wagon. But Gomez is a theatrical force as well. This is her ninth solo show, and if you've seen any of her previous theater work (especially the shows about her show-biz parents), you know how artfully she blends the high entertainment value of stand-up comedy with the more deeply felt levels of autobiographical storytelling.
It is, frankly, news that the ever-youthful Gomez is not getting any younger. She's as spry as ever (just wait until you see her do the twist and then demonstrate some more contemporary dances moves she likes to call "the anal twist"). For someone who looks so good and is working at the top of her considerable game, it's somewhat surprising that Gomez is so worked up about landing in mid-middle age.
One of the key components of Younger is that Gomez intends to reveal her actual age. In storytelling terms, this is called suspense. If you look up her Wikipedia page (which she says she composed herself while stoned), the birth date reads: June 19, 1960 [citation needed]. Citation needed indeed. In attempting to shave a few years off her age, Gomez admits, she actually made herself older than she intended. Or so she'd like us to believe.
In her laugh-out-loud show, Gomez discusses visiting the amusement park Freedomland in the Bronx when she was young. Curiously, the Wikipedia page for that park states that opening day was June 19, 1960. It probably wouldn't be too hard to find out Gomez's real name. Just a casual breeze through her press clips, you see one reference to the move she made from Long Island to San Francisco when she was 20. Another story places that move in 1979.
Whatever her age, whether she's in her early 50s or whether, like her mother, she holds to an ever less believable 21, Gomez is ageless because she's a dynamic performer and afunny and talented writer. Show business is such a warped world that age can mean life or death to a performer, especially a woman, who is likely to be more harshly judged for having the nerve to age (see Joan Rivers [citation needed]). In a perfect world, Gomez wouldn't care how old she was because age bears no relation whatsoever to her gifts as a performer. The years have certainly helped shape her into the performer she is today (thank you, years), but they have yet to diminish any of her spark.
Originally directed by Ellen Sebastian Chang in a workshop earlier this year, Younger is really less about age than it is about lying. Referring back to that pesky Wikipedia page, there's a mention that Gomez is known for her honesty. Of course we know on that very page she's lying about her age. In setting about the creation of this show, she reveals that her mother lied about her age for much of her life. That's one of many thoughts she explored in the writing process, which took place primarily in her neighborhood Starbuck's ("an atmosphere conducive to writing about lies"). Over many soy lattes, she worried about Social Security ceasing to exist exactly on her 65th birthday. She also fretted over schoolchildren who were ever-present in the coffee shop ("What could possibly be so bad in their lives that they need coffee?") and even more so about the babies, whom she does not like ("They're stupid adults waiting to happen.").
She hides from a former lover who has let her hair go naturally gray, while Gomez admits to having had gray hair since childhood (you can't see it, she says, because now it's internal).
Like any person talking about the aging process, Gomez has to let out her inner curmudgeon, the one that wants to share that she grew up before the advent of the Internet, that she knows what it's like to have used a rotary phone, that she studied arithmetic in school (not math) and that she remembers Valencia Street before the trees and hipsters when it was mostly mariachi bands and lesbians. Her funniest curmudgeon story involves a trip to that nightmarish palace of eternal youth, Forever 21. Suffice it to say that if Gomez ever thanks you for anything, don't answer with "uh huh." And whatever you do, DO NOT call her ma'am. "That's a word that can give you arthritis," she says.
Another show high point involves a childhood friend named Lisa, who liked to recruit her friends for the purpose of teasing and taunting old people. Gomez reacts to that by forming her own short-lived do-gooder club called Old People Helper. When she goes to Lisa's house for a birthday party, the festivities are presided over by her father, an ex-Marine who was tossed for being too aggressive. If you don't think Gomez can be an effective ex-Marine, you sadly underestimate her skills as an actor. Judi Dench could only dream of being such a scary Marine.
There are several moments in Younger when Gomez reveals some of what's really going on with her, as when she mentions that she's six years away from the age at which her dad died and seven years away from the age her mom died. That, more than anything we hear, makes you understand what all this fussing over age is really about. Marga Gomez may not be getting any younger, but she's getting funnier. And braver.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Marga Gomez's Not Getting Any Younger continues an extended run through Dec. 17 at The Marsh Studio Theater, 1062 Valencia St., San Francisco.Tickets are $15-$35 on a sliding scale. Call 415-282-3055 or visit www.themarsh.org.