Mitchell Anderson shares the story behind his solo show, ‘You Better Call Your Mother’
Mitchell Anderson’s new one-man show is “You Better Call Your Mother” premieres Nov. 4 at Synchronicity Theater.
Richie Arpino
Emmy-nominated actor, chef, and restaurateur Mitchell Anderson is no stranger to the spotlight. After bravely coming out on stage at a GLAAD awards dinner in 1996, Anderson continues to prove he’s not afraid to be vulnerable with audiences. The actor now presents his new original one-person cabaret-style show, “You Better Call Your Mother,” about his experiences in Hollywood, coming out in front of a live audience and where his adventures have led him. Anderson performs this live memoir, punctuated with song, at Synchronicity Theatre from November 4-7. He joined “City Lights” host Lois Reitzes via Zoom and shared the reflections that inspired “You Better Call Your Mother.”
“At the beginning of the show, I talk about being in my MetroFresh kitchen, in the middle of the darkest December in modern history last year, thinking about this little boy who was a sort of over-achiever, this nerdy little boy,” said Anderson. “He grew up, and he went to have a career in Hollywood, and he wound up in Atlanta at age 60 in the MetroFresh kitchen selling soup for a living. And I thought, ‘Well, that seems like an interesting story, how did that all happen?’”
Anderson made a resolution to do something special with his story. “It was literally a New Year’s resolution,” he said. “So I reached out to fellow Juilliard alum and cabaret artist, amazing actress and singer Courtenay Collins, who I knew sort of peripherally but not really well, and I said, ‘How do I do this, Courtenay?’” As it turned out, the Atlanta theater mainstay Collins wouldn’t just offer her sage advice but would become the director of “You Better Call Your Mother.”
Regarding the content and experience of his one-person show, Anderson advised audiences to expect more of a “play with music” than a literal cabaret. “In my mind, I was going to do a show that was a typical cabaret, ‘patter, patter, patter, song, patter, patter, patter, song,’ but what has happened is, I have these … four, five, six-minute monologues, from which songs emerge. Much more musical-like, honestly,” said Anderson.
He intersperses the show’s monologues and biographical slices of life with lovingly selected musical interludes from the canon of Broadway, pop and standards. “There’s a song from “Falsettos,” for instance, that I happened to see four years, five years ago on Broadway right after my father had passed away,” Anderson said. “There’s a song at the end of the first act that Christian Boyle sang in the revival, called ‘Father to Son,’ that absolutely made me weep. So when I’m thinking about my relationship with my father, I knew that I wanted to sing that song.”
The origin of the show’s title comes directly from that fateful night in 1996 at the GLAAD media awards in Los Angeles, when Anderson would take the brave and spontaneous plunge into a public acknowledgment of his sexuality. “I was playing a gay character on “Party of Five,” and during that night, I was asked by more than one reporter about what it’s like to play a gay character when you’re straight,” Anderson recalled. “At that time in my life, I was 35. I had been super political and raising money for HIV and AIDS … It didn’t make sense for me anymore to deflect that question, as most actors did at that time in the mid-’90s. So for some reason, that night, I came out on stage, and I said, ‘I can’t answer this question by this reporter because I play a gay character on TV, and I also happen to be gay.’ As I walked off-stage, this lovely man, a publicist for GLAAD, tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘You better call your mother.’”
Delivering his one-person show in front of his parents has proved daunting for the actor and writer, despite his history of courageous honesty in public spaces. “There is a certain amount of trepidation, and I talk very lovingly yet very honestly about my relationship with my mom and my dad,” said Anderson. “They didn’t have a bad reaction… Ultimately, it truly is about love. And while there can be conflict in the middle of that, and obviously, conflict makes good theater, at the end, I think it never comes from a place of anger or soreness. It only comes from a place of love.”
Anderson’s talent in delivering moving reflections on life shows through in other media, as well. His 2015 cookbook, “Food & Thought,” contains a section of original recipes (and Anderson’s intuitive “cook with your eyes” philosophy). It also includes a compilation of personal emails he sent out to customers and fans daily over a decade of running his restaurant MetroFresh in Midtown Atlanta. They form something akin to a biography of Anderson’s community, with birth announcements, obituaries, pet adoptions and weddings, as well as milestones in the life of Anderson and the restaurant.
“Now, oddly enough, I’ve been in the kitchen making soup for a living for as long as I was in Hollywood making television,” Anderson mused.
Synchronicity Theatre in Atlanta presents “You Better Call Your Mother” Nov. 4-7. More on Synchronicity Theatre events can be found at https://synchrotheatre.com/, and tickets for “You Better Call Your Mother” are available here.
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