All-female show satirizes with a broad point of view
(Correction: Because of a reporting error, a story in Friday's Weekend section about ''Broad Comedy" writer/director Katie Goodman wrongly identified her father as Robert Levey. Her father is retired surgeon and novelist Anthony A. Goodman. Levey, a retired Globe journalist, is her stepfather.)
The Stuart Street Playhouse already hosts one kind of comedic girls night out -- one that draws an audience of mother-daughter pairs and groups of hot-flash mamas: ''Menopause the Musical." But on Saturday nights this month, after the other show is over, in will march another brand of women-oriented comedic fare, ''Broad Comedy," which caters to a younger, edgier crowd.
Katie Goodman is bringing her all-female sketch comedy show to Boston for its first extended run after winning the Best of Vancouver Fringe Fest award last year. The writer-director has staged ''Broad Comedy" with different actresses for about six years at Equinox Theatre Company in Bozeman, Mont., where she is co-artistic director with her husband, Soren Kissel.
Goodman, 37, the daughter of Globe columnist Ellen Goodman and retired surgeon and novelist Robert Levey, takes pains to emphasize that ''Broad Comedy" is not stand-up comedy, it's theater. The show consists of short satirical vignettes that tackle gender issues, politics, and sex education.
Sketches include ''The Active Egg," which features a giant ovum ''choosing" its own sperm, and ''Oral Exam," about four mothers on a park bench having an intellectual discussion about the nuances of oral sex.
And, as Goodman says, ''I don't think you can be a satirist happily without having something to say about what's going on in this country." So there are more political offerings: the musical number ''The Pro-Life & the Pro-Choice Should be Friends" (a spin on an ''Oklahoma" song), a piece that skewers the teen abstinence movement, and one that takes on the Bush White House, ''The United States Extreme Right Wing Cheerleading Squad," in which the cast wears red cheerleaders' outfits.
''Women's theater is all I've ever done," Goodman says. She ran the Philadelphia Women's Theater Festival and founded and produced the National Women's Theatre Festival in Los Angeles. She's also a founding member of the Spontaneous Combustibles Improvisational Comedy Troupe in Bozeman.
There's no male-bashing in the show, she says: ''The male who wrote it with me [Kissel] keeps his eye on that. It's really important to me that men are in on the gender discussion."
She says ''Broad" is both a girls night out and a date night. ''That's unusual for women's material." Men, she says, love the show. ''Guys come to see the show and say, 'Oh, this is what women really talk about! It's a total surprise to them sometimes. They keep coming back, not like they're dragged there, they're choosing to come."
Runs Saturday nights at 8 in March at the Stuart Street Playhouse at the Radisson Hotel, 200 Stuart St. Tickets: $20-$28. 800-447-7400, www.telecharge.com.
Thorson, who uses a wheelchair, is a longtime advocate for full access to the arts for people with disabilities. The pairing with Wheelock is apt, as the company's efforts to provide access to the disabled has won it numerous awards, including the 2005 Commonwealth Award. Wheelock Family Theatre, 200 The Riverway. Tickets: $10-$20. 617-879-2300 (TTY: 617-879-2150),tickets@wheelock.edu
Wasserstein, a '71 graduate whose works portray the challenging and complex lives of contemporary women, died on Jan. 30 of complications from lymphoma. Rooke Theatre, Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley. Free, but reservations are required. 413-538-2406.
