Judy Gold Debut’s Mommy Queerest at the Huntington

Last year at this time, Judy Gold was in Boston with her one-woman show, 25 Questions for a Jewish Mother, playing the Huntington’s Calderwood Pavilion. But there was another show brewing she couldn’t quite finish off, at least until Peter DuBois, the Calderwood’s artistic director, asked her if she wanted to bring her next show back to Boston.

A year later, she’s back in Boston with the premiere of her new show, Mommy Queerest, which might still be in the limbo world of development if she hadn’t booked the Boston date. “I had been working and working on this and it gave me a deadline, which is always the scariest thing in the world,” she says.

Where 25 Questions was more of a play with laugh lines and poignant moments, covering the experiences of more than 50 women, Mommy Queerest is Gold’s own story. And since Gold is a stand-up comic, naturally, her own story is all about the laughs. “It’s very, very different,” she says. “Mommy Queerest is a lot of what people know me for, stand-up and storytelling. It’s really what I’ve done for the past twenty-plus years. It’s about being a gay mom and growing up with my mother.”

Gold is a gay mother of two living in New York, and the theme of gay marriage, she says, is prominent in the show. You can’t talk about being gay and having a family without the creep of politics, especially in light of the various anti-gay marriage propositions in the last election. Gold addresses that, but would prefer to keep the focus on family dynamics.

“It’s funny, because you hear about how gay parents are going to poison their kids and make them gay,” she says. “Well, I came from a mother and father, and as far as I know, most people came from a traditional, quote-unquote, family. And gay parents do not typically have gay children. Once people realize it’s not a choice, it’s the way we are, the way we’re born, and that everyone needs to realize that they know and love a gay person, whether or not they want to admit it.”

After the show’s Boston run, Gold will take Mommy Queerest on the road while still booking dates for 25 Questions. “I’m so proud of that,” she says. “I want to bring it to as many places as I can. I love doing it.”

Gold is also planning a variety show with Lea DeLaria for Provincetown this summer. The two have been working on it as their schedules allow, and will revisit the concept, according to Gold, after the first of the year. “We really would love to bring a variety show to Provincetown, so people can see something new, you know?” she says. “There’s a lot of drag shows and there’s a lot of comics, but this would be something a little more dimensional.”

Mommy Queerest, at the Virginia Wimberly Theatre at the Calderwood Pavilion, Dec 26-31. Tickets: $25-$45. 617-266-0800. www.huntingtontheatre.org

Review: Lea DeLaria's Christmas Cheer and the anti-Fred Phelps

Three blocks from the Calderwood Pavilion on our way to the Lea DeLaria show yesterday, I heard faint cheering, a chant or two lifting up over the sound of the wind blowing down Clarendon Street. I thought it might be carolers or a crowd coming from some sports event. But when we turned on Tremont Street, there was a crowd of maybe a hundred people packed tightly onto the sidewalk across the street from the theatre complex, singing cheerily.

That’s when I saw the signs. “God Hates Fags.” “You’re Going to Hello.” Six of Fred Phelps’ wacko supporters were outside in a small taped off area, hoisting their signs smugly in the air, or trying to walk in a small circle. The hundred people across the street were counter-protesters, and as I realized they were singing the national anthem, and that the cop across the street was actually leading them in song, I got a warm, joyful feeling. My thought was that they were there to protest DeLaria, about as out a lesbian as you could find. I pitied them if DeLaria were to find out they were there, because there were only six of them. I didn’t find out until after the show what they were actually there for.

But I brought that warm feeling with me into the upstairs room the Calderwood had turned into a cabaret, complete with tables and drinks and mood lighting, with a stage just big enough for DeLaria and her piano/bass/drums trio, Janette Mason and the Ho Ho Hos. Mason (an accomplished musician in her own right, who scored the recent Bob Hoskins film Ruby Blue), led the trio in an elegant version of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” before DeLaria took the stage.

DeLaria kicked off her set with a fluid, fun “Sleigh Ride,” since this was a Christmas cabaret show. But she followed it with “Night and Day,” and then told the crowd how she hates Christmas. Anathema, she said, for the gay and lesbian crowd who get to dress the whole house in drag.

If you’re wondering why I’m reviewing a music show on a comedy blog, it’s because DeLaria is as skilled a comedian as she is a singer, and her aggressive comic style, even when she’s ranting about Christmas or politics, is as joyful and vivacious as the music in her program. As she put it, there was “a lot of great music and a lot of cranky stand-up.”

Part of the reason she hates Christmas, she said, is because she lives in New York, which is flooded with tourists during the season, people who fly from Kansas to see Mama Mia. “I’d rather watch $135 burn on the sidewalk,” she said, than pay the ticket price for that show.

The show was an enormous amount of fun. DeLaria sang a “Jingle Bells” cha cha cha that segued into “Manana,” sang an obscure song about mistletoe with some forced audience participation, and delivered a stunning, delicate rendition of “Christmastime Is Here.” The encore, a nimble, beautiful “Devil and the Deep Blue Sea.”

After the show, I learned from DeLaria that she had tangled with Fred Phelps before, getting him to try to crawl over his foot soldiers to take a swing at her. It was a proud moment for her, that she was able to taunt the guy ‘til he popped. As I walked out, I found the real reason the protesters were there. “The Laramie Project,” a play about a small town after the murder of Matthew Shepard, was playing in the theater next door. It’s too bad god hates fags. The Phelps people missed a great show.

Lea DeLaria: Laughing and Singing at the Calderwood

For the past ten years or so, Lea DeLaria has been more of a jazz and Broadway singer than a comedian, but the mark she left on stand-up can’t be forgotten. When she played Fox’s Arsenio Hall Show in 1993, she became the first openly gay comedian to perform on network TV. For the next three nights at the Huntington Theatre’s Calderwood Pavilion, you can get a taste of the breadth of DeLaria’s talent as she brings her Christmas show to the Upstairs at the Calderwood cabaret series (with a couple of Berklee musicians in tow). I spoke with her for the Boston Globe last week, but here’s another peek at what you can expect, from that conversation.

“I think that’s one of the reasons I stand out as a singer because all singers do patter between songs, it just so happens that I have a history as a stand-up comic so when I do my patter, it’s funny,” says DeLaria. “Sometimes it’s hilarious. The tour I just did in Australia, people were screaming with laughter. It was just that type of tour where I was on, I was really funny, the music was great, the band was on. I mean, I’m kind of looking for that to happen when I come to Boston. It’s that kind of show. No one really hires me to just do stand-up anymore. It’s not my life.”

For more info, call 617-266-0800 or go to www.huntingtontheatre.org.