Marga Gomez: Not Getting Any Younger

If you live long enough, there will inevitably come a moment when you realize that no matter how hard you try or how much you want it, you will never be hip, cool, or cutting-edge ever again. And despite all those platitudes about how you're only as old as you feel, 40 being the new 30, and the life-extending wonders of medical technology, aging can be a depressing prospect.

Fortunately for us all, comedian Marga Gomez has come to our rescue with a new one-woman show that just opened at The Marsh in San Francisco. "Not Getting Any Younger" chronicles Gomez's own neuroses about getting older. And though it may not exactly be a cure for aging, it's certainly the best one I know: a solid 90 minutes of laugh-out-loud entertainment from a comedian equally gifted with talents for physical comedy, convincing impersonation of colorful characters, satire, and insightful wit.

Gomez is a lesbian comedian who was out before Ellen Degeneres, Rosie O'Donnell or Wanda Sykes dared to breathe a public word about their personal lives. But in 2011, Gomez resents the label of "pioneer." It evokes images of crossing broad, homophobic plains with horses and covered wagons, and only reminds her of how very old she is.

In fact, Gomez is so keen on keeping her age a secret that while she apparently had no hesitation about flinging the closet door wide when it came to her sexual orientation, she's been covering up her age for years. In her show, she confesses that she went as far as to lie about her birth date in the entry she created about herself in Wikipedia.

Now, she's wrestling her fear about revealing her age (literally rolling around on the floor, begging the audience to boo and hiss her invisible opponent). But it's an overwhelming battle. After all, Gomez learned the habit of lying about her age from her mother.

This is revealed when the show vividly recalls a childhood trip to Freedomland, a historical amusement park founded by a rival of Walt Disney's. Gomez found herself there because her mom was a huge Chubby Checker fan and he was playing a concert at the park.

When her mom wins the twisting contest and she's asked her age, she shaves off more than a decade. In this scene and throughout the show Gomez acts the part of her mom so well that it's easy to understand her powerful influence on her daughter and why that wrestling opponent is so hard to shake off.

"Not Getting Any Younger" takes the audience on an associative rather than chronological journey. Gomez's self-revelatory material is fresh, funny, raw enough to evoke real emotion, but never descends into navel-gazing or cringe-worthy TMI.

She vents frustration at contemporary manners (or lack thereof) and takes a satirical swipe at today's children with an appreciated level of self-awareness. And her humor never relies on the kind of mean and angry rants so common among contemporary comedians that lets them claim easy laughs but leaves a nasty aftertaste. Instead, she uses intelligence and quick-witted connections to thread the show together into an engaging narrative.

And while the narrative seems a little rough around the edges and its transitions a little choppy, it coalesces into a very satisfying whole. With a little more fine-tuning, "Not Getting Any Younger" promises to be one of Gomez's finer pieces of work. And with a theme that speaks to audiences regardless of gender, sexual orientation or, indeed age, let's hope that the show gets the broad attention it deserves.

Proving herself still cool, hip and quite a babe in her advancing years, Marga Gomez provides a performance that might not leave you looking younger, but you'll exit The Marsh feeling lighter by several years.