STAGE REVIEW : Glaser Shines as Fun ‘Secrets’ Come to Light

In a five-person family, there are always six points of view.

One for each of the family members. The sixth for the sly writer who nails all those views down.

Sheri Glaser, in her remarkable one-woman show, “Family Secrets,” is the writer and performer who gets it all just right. The show, an independent production at the Hahn Cosmopolitan, has everything. It’s funny, it’s fast, it’s smart and it has heart.

From Mort to his wife, Bev, to their daughters, Fern and Sandra, and Grandmother Rose, Glaser and her co-writer and husband, Greg Howells, have created indelible portraits of Bronx babies.

Those who remember Glaser from her work in the San Diego comedy troupe “Hot Flashes” that disbanded a scant five years ago may have seen this show coming.

Of course, those prescient people are probably the same ones who saw the future of another Hot Flasher, Mo Gaffney, who had an off-Broadway smash with another poignant collection of comic vignettes, “The Kathy & Mo Show.”

And remember what you were told here when “The Kathy & Mo Show” played at the Old Globe Theatre prior to its New York run: Catch them while you can still afford them. The same applies to Glaser’s show. Hers is a talent and a career that is just about to take off.

What a treat that Glaser brought this show down from Los Angeles--where it played for seven sold-out months at the Heliotrope Theatre--to San Diego, the city where she first discovered herself as a comic performer.

Glaser sets the tone in the first vignette, walking out in a suit and gray Brillo-like wig as Mort, the bemused and bewildered father of the clan we are about to meet.

Mort’s a pretty straightforward guy. He’s a tax accountant. He likes his job, he likes his house, he likes a good cheese Danish. He has a weakness: He likes to tell people “to just do what makes you happy.”

That didn’t seem like such a big deal to him at the time. To him, growing up in the Bronx, having a bat and a ball made him happy. Getting spaghetti for dinner with a fried egg and ketchup on top made him happy.

Then he finds out his family has different ideas of happiness.

His son, whom he just put through engineering school, decides it would make him happy to chuck everything for life as a shepherd in Israel. Meanwhile, daughter Fern tells him she’s fallen in love with a Jewish tax attorney who makes her very happy. He’s thrilled. Until Fern tells Mort he’ll love her. Her?

This he can’t accept. At least not for a while. When he finally does, she tells him she’s already moved on to another love interest: a spiritual channeler named Miguel. They’re pregnant without any visible means of support, but not to worry, Fern tells him. “The universe will provide.”

He nods. “You want to meet the universe?” he asks the audience. He pulls out his checkbook. “It’s right here.”

Now Mort thinks he was better off with the Jewish tax attorney.

Right after Mort finishes blaming the kids on his wife, we get to meet her and hear her point of view. Platinum-haired Bev, striving for control, talks about how hard she tried to be the perfect mother. Only problem was, her kids wouldn’t cooperate. Next comes dark-haired Fern, who takes us through the birth of her baby. “I know why so many women die in childbirth,” she says, reflecting on the pain. “It’s preferable.”

After intermission we meet teen-age Sandra, who can’t decide if she’s depressed or elated about having lost her virginity in a quickie interlude at a party the night before. And finally there’s the old grandmother, hunched over, working her teeth as if they were dentures, talking about discovering true love at age 80.

The show is fluidly directed by a third Hot Flashes alum, Robyn Samuels. The tone allows Glaser to move smoothly from jokes to unexpected depths, as when she has Bev try to comes to terms with her own mother’s suicide, when Bev was just 4. And Glaser pulls it off without wallowing or negating the seriousness of the issues she raises. It’s a breathtaking tour de force.

The show is further strengthened by the family theme. Not only are these characters of independent interest by themselves, but the way they see each other as opposed to the way they see themselves gives the piece a “Rashomon”-like quality that could be developed further.

Oddly, the 30-year-old Glaser seems more insightful about why the parents are the way they are than she does about the daughters, to whom she is closer in age and life experience. Sure, the daughters have a funny take on life, but why are they such rebels?

But Glaser has promised to work in a few more characters during the course of the run: possibly Fern’s gay lover, Holly, or her husband, Miguel, or the brother who moved to Israel. Maybe they will answer a few more questions.

And maybe at some point Glaser will rethink Jeff Klarin’s bland set.

One can only hope so. This show leaves you wanting more, not because what is here isn’t satisfying. It is. But one always wants more of a good thing.

And this show is a very good thing indeed.

“FAMILY SECRETS”

Conceived, co-written and performed by Sheri Glaser. Co-written by Greg Howells. Director is Robyn Samuels. Set by Jeff Klarin. Lighting by Matthew Cubitto. Photography by Jeff Klarin and Lynda Sterns. Stage manager is Trudy Miles. At 7:30 p.m. Thursdays and 8 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays with Sunday matinees at 2 through Nov. 4. At 444 4th Ave., San Diego. (619) 234-9583.