THE KATHY AND MO SHOW: FUNNY, GUTSY AND RISING

Most people in the theater world will wait until they have a certified hit before taking their show to New York.

But San Diegans Kathy Najimy and Maureen (Mo) Gaffney are not most people. So what if two years ago they weren’t taken seriously enough to even merit reviews by most of the local critics. They believed their “Kathy and Mo Show,” a series of comic vignettes opening tonight at the Old Globe Theatre, was worth seeing.

In the fall of 1985, when their show was a year old, Najimy, then 28, applied for and obtained a transfer to New York of her long-distance operator job at American Telephone & Telegraph; she quit a few months later. Gaffney, then 26, packed up all $400 of her savings and joined Najimy in New York.

They took odd jobs while searching for theaters in the Yellow Pages and contacted every producer listed. When they got their first booking at a cabaret called Don’t Tell Mama, Najimy called or wrote every reviewer and agent listed in town.

“I didn’t even know who Joseph Papp was, but I called and talked to him in his office,” Najimy said. (Papp sent an assistant to the show.) “I called David Letterman, MS Magazine, ‘Saturday Night Live,’ lots of owners of off-Broadway theaters.

“I said, ‘My name is Kathy, I’m in New York and this is very different and it’s the best thing you’ll ever see. And I’d like you to come.’ ”

Weren’t they the least bit afraid?

“I’m afraid of a lot of things, but if you believe in what you’re doing, it’s not hard,” Najimy said. “What did I have to lose? They could have said you’re out of your mind, you’re from San Diego and you don’t look like Meryl Streep. I think you can do anything you want to do and this is what I wanted to do. I felt the universe was on my side.”

By the spring of 1986, the 22-square-mile universe of Manhattan certainly was.

Early in their run at Don’t Tell Mama, Nightlife, an entertainment newspaper, named Najimy and Gaffney as being among the 10 funniest women in New York, and The New York Times described them as “two women with the potential to become the Nichols and May of feminist-oriented humor.”

Critics seem surprised that they can be feminists and funny at the same time. (Often singled out for praise is their send-up of some feminist poetry: “We are birth, we are fetal, we are afterbirth.”) Even more surprising is that the two women insist, “We don’t tell jokes.”

That’s because their humor comes from real people and real-life situations.

“We love our characters,” Najimy said. And it shows, from the two old New York women, Maddie and Syvvie, who are best friends (Syvvie is a composite of Gaffney’s mother, grandmother and Aunt Ruth), to the adolescent girls who Gaffney and Najimy once spied on the subway talking about their boyfriends.

Don’t Tell Mama led to a spot at off-Broadway’s Second Stage. Raves from The New York Post, The Village Voice and the Hollywood Reporter followed, and then a commitment to do a show for Home Box Office and a contract with super-agent Sam Cohn, who also handles Lily Tomlin, the performer to whom they are most often compared.

(The women are flattered by the comparison. Najimy is such an admirer of the comedienne that once when Tomlin was appearing in San Diego, Najimy, determined to meet her idol, called Tomlin, described herself as a reporter for a fictitious newspaper and conducted an interview.)

With all that they have going for them, are they excited to be back home strutting their stuff?

“I sort of grew up at the Globe,” Gaffney said. “I worked in the box office when I was 19. It feels great that we can come back and instead of saying, ‘Can I have a job,’ say ‘Gee, can we play in your theater?’ It’s really like coming home for me.”

Najimy feels the same. When she and Gaffney returned in the spring to play at her alma mater, San Diego State University, she had her sister take a picture of their names under the Montezuma Hall marquee.

But how did all this happen? In a town like New York, which has no shortage of aspiring comics, what did Gaffney and Najimy do that made them so special?

While much of their inspiration comes from what Najimy described as one of her favorite activities--”eavesdropping”--at least one short piece is based on spontaneous improvisation. While living in San Diego, Gaffney bought a new car. When she picked up Najimy to go to a movie, Najimy remembers feeling so awkward about being driven that it conjured up the feeling of being on a date.

Najimy slipped into the part of a spacey San Diego State co-ed. Gaffney played her fraternity boyfriend.

“We got bored with the movie and kept our characters, even going to Denny’s with them afterwards,” Najimy said. “The waitress would ask me what I wanted and I would smile and whisper my answer to Kathy and she would order for me.”

That is the piece scheduled to open their show at the Old Globe, “Parallel Lives.”

The title comes from a book Gaffney read by a hypnotist who uses the term “parallel lives” to describe contemporary people who “share souls.”

“So much stand-up comedy is cruel,” Gaffney said. “It is making fun of people and pointing out their pimples and stuff. Our characters are funny, but we don’t make fun of them. They’re human beings.”

Gaffney said that’s where the idea of “parallel lives” comes in.

“If someone else is running around with part of your soul, you can’t be judgmental of them.”