Comedy on the beaten path

The title -- “My Mother’s Italian, My Father’s Jewish and I’m in Therapy” -- earns a chuckle. A lifetime’s worth of little family frictions seem to buzz through those words, demanding cathartic release.

One-of-a-kind stories, filtered through wry reflection, are not what Steve Solomon delivers in this one-man show, however. What he’s performing at the Brentwood Theatre is really just conventional stand-up material, most of it broadly drawn and already often visited.

Mom, who’s of Palermo stock, is never given much more dimension than that “she’s got arms like this” -- Solomon indicates a weightlifter-size limb -- “from stirring sauce.” Dad, of Russian Jewish heritage, fends off charges of stinginess by saying: “I’m not cheap, I’m thrifty. I was born with nothing, and I’ve still got most of it.”

What do they do that might drive Solomon into therapy? Yelling into a cellphone as though having a conversation with his now elderly, hard-of-hearing parents, he reports on the latest date set up by his mother. “As usual, you got it wrong,” he barks. “She’s not Lebanese. Lesbian, Ma.” Raise your hand if you’ve heard that one before.

OK, you can put it back down now.

The Brooklyn-reared comic, who looks to be in his 50s, wears a variety of hangdog expressions but now and again lets loose a genuine grin, breaking character to let us know that everything’s really just fine. He’s an amiable guy, with enough problems to make him human. His act, almost Borscht Belt in nature, probably plays well in South Florida, now his home, and will no doubt find an audience here in L.A. -- as long as that audience hasn’t already been sated by Billy Crystal’s recent gig.

Solomon performs on a set decorated to look like a therapist’s office (although the piano in the corner, provided for a couple of brief musical memories, seems out of place in such a context). The therapist never shows, so Solomon vents to us instead.

Solomon comes closest to delivering on his title when describing his mother’s early-marriage introduction to kosher dietary laws, because those rules pretty much wipe out a culinary heritage based on smothering meat with cheese. And he’s pretty good at sound effects, such as the squeaking floorboards and hiss of a zipper as a grandfather makes regular treks to the upstairs bathroom.

The rest is pretty predictable. The youthful Solomon, turning to a grandma for help on his homework, asks: “What are genitals?” To which she replies: “Those are people who are not Jewish.” Digs at Solomon’s ex-wife include: “She used the smoke alarm as a meal timer.” Now and again during Friday’s 80-minute show, Solomon had to caution already-giggling audience members: “Don’t get ahead of me.” That’s not where you want a comedy audience to be.

*

‘My Mother’s Italian’

What: “My Mother’s Italian, My Father’s Jewish and I’m in Therapy”

Where: Brentwood Theatre, 11301 Wilshire Blvd., Brentwood

When: 7:30 p.m. Wednesdays and Thursdays, 8 p.m. Fridays, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays. Also 7:30 p.m. this Tuesday

Ends: April 9

Price: $32 to $61

Contact: (213) 365-3500 or www.BrentwoodTheatre.com

Running time: 1 hour, 20 minutes