Family Secrets: Take My Family. Please.

It takes a certain amount of moxie for an actress to try and get her audience to sing along with her to "Sunrise, Sunset", but I suppose when you write a solo play about a Jewish family, somebody's gotta start singing from Fiddler. Sherry Glaser shows some moxie, to be sure in Family Secrets, which returns to New York after a successful Off-Broadway run in 1993. Sometimes the moxie is a bit misguided (Is nose-picking ever really funny?) but there are enough amusing antics to add up to a relatively pleasant evening.

Co-authored by Glaser with her late husband, Gregg Howells, and directed this time around by Bob Balaban, the actress plays five members of an upper middle class Jewish family from the Bronx transplanted to California. What secrets are revealed? I didn't catch any. And though there are a few minor links connecting some of the monologues in this ninety-minute performance, it's really more of a Borscht Belt family act than a play of any substance. Sure, there are some good gags and some nice character work, but not much more.

Opening with her best work, Glaser starts the play as the weary middle-aged businessman Mort ("Every morning I took the 6:59 train to work. Why they never made it the 7 o'clock, I don't know.") who takes his daughter Fern's newly announced lesbianism as an attempt to kill him.

After an on stage wardrobe change (Glaser ends each monologue while changing and begins anew when the transformation is complete), she is Mort's wife, Bev, who, from her perpetual smile, appears to have had her face lifted at one time or another. Bev's monologue concerns her nervous breakdown after an unfortunate lasagna incident, continually accented by a sharp annoying laugh.

Their daughter Fern has switched back to men for the third piece -- at least long enough to get pregnant -- and is having a rough go of it during natural childbirth, wishing to bite her boyfriend in the testicle every three minutes so he'll have some idea what she's going through.

After an intermission, the teenage Sandra whines about being grounded, tells us about an unfortunate first sexual experience and complains about her poor body image. Important subjects, for sure, but played more for surface laughs than insight.

The finale is delivered by Mort's octogenarian mother, Rose, with a story to remind us that it's never too late to find love and happiness.

Perhaps thirteen years ago Family Secrets seemed fresher. It's difficult to look at a solo play like this as a period piece. And perhaps Ms. Glaser's characterizations didn't seem so similar back then. The rudimentary differences are there, but there are not five complete individuals populating the stage. But so long as the jokes keep coming, and they do at a reasonable pace, Family Secrets entertains.

Photos of Sherry Glaser by Carol Rosegg