Los Big Names

From Heather Gold's I Look Like an Egg, But I Identify as a Cookie to Colman Domingo's A Boy and His Soul, the San Francisco theater scene has been awash of late with quirky and well-conceived solo shows by gay artists. Marga Gomez, however, takes the genre to dizzy new heights in Los Big Names, a one-woman production about growing up gay in a Latino showbiz household. From the moment she steps onstage impersonating her vaudeville-comedian father in a tailcoat, boxer shorts, frilly dress shirt, and stick-on mustache to the moment she departs, slinking off into the wings in her showgirl mother's heels and hat, Gomez displays an aptitude for caricature and social satire as virtuosic as a Tito Puente vibraphone break. Whether reminiscing about Queen Latifah's death scene in the Hollywood megaflop Sphere or reliving the time her parents asked her to choose between them, Gomez never lapses into sentimentality. Thanks to David Schweizer's rhythmic direction, Alexander Nichols' evocative lights and set, and intelligent use of sound by Mark O'Brien, Los Big Names is a bold confessional with deep-rooted family spirit.