Brad Zimmerman’s My Son the Waiter is stand-up comedy, not a proper play. But it’s being presented in a theatre, not a nightclub or auditorium, so I suppose it qualifies for review in these pages. Zimmerman is an actor as well as a comic; you might have seen him as Johnny Sacks’s lawyer in “The Sopranos.” But mostly he has worked in stand-up, opening for such stars as Joan Rivers, Billy Crystal, and George Carlin (who told him his act was “fuckin’ great.”) Next, Zimmerman put together the autobiographical routine which became My Son the Waiter and scored a hit off-Broadway with it, running for fifteen sold-out months. Jewish humor is what Zimmerman is all about: jokes about Jewish mothers, food, and behavior abound, all delivered in crisp, assured fashion, with lots of self-deprecation to deflate any display of ego (“in high school I was voted the kid most likely to end up working for his father”). Mostly, though, his monologue show deals with his decision to make a living as a waiter while pursuing his dream of succeeding in show business, For 29 years he toiled in a shabby restaurant and lived in a one-room apartment to support himself while honing his acting and comedic skills. Now that he has broken through as a performer, he can joke about his past travails and failures, always with the salty, irreverent edge that’s typical of most Jewish comics. Zimmerman’s routine is not in any way daring or ground-breaking; he avoids politics, current events and religion, choosing instead to stay focused on the personal realm: dealing with his disapproving mother, coping with bad dates, bitching about the things that bug him (super-models, celebrities like the Kardashians). Clad in just a T-shirt and jeans, the lithe, balding Zimmerman prowls the stage in a restless, panther-like way, working the crowd masterfully, getting one big laugh after another, even when he tells an old joke. His goal is to get to Broadway with My Son the Waiter, and, thanks to his deft way with Jewish humor, he might just make it.
