For Cantone, humor starts at home

STONEHAM -- ''So that's where the fire started," Mario Cantone is saying.

The comedian best known for his role as the outrageous wedding planner on ''Sex and the City" is pointing under a staircase in his childhood home, where his mother Liz allegedly ''arranged" to have sparks fly some 34 years ago so she could get insurance money.

To redecorate.

That wasn't the only example of his family's bad behavior.

There was the cousin who used to switch price tags on clothing at Marshall's and then brag about it.

And the aunts and uncles who used to work as bookies. Some of them were busted, along with Cantone's dad Mario. ''Daddy went to 'camp' for three months," Cantone says.

The exploits of this North Shore family will get a full airing Saturday at 9 p.m., when the cable network Showtime debuts Cantone's 90-minute comedy special ''Laugh Whore."

The program is an edited tape of Cantone's Tony Award-nominated one-man Broadway show, which ran for three months in New York. In the special, viewers will see Cantone do a dead-on impersonation of an overwrought Liza Minnelli. He will embody Julia Child.And he will reenact an exasperating audition for the stage version of ''The Lion King," which included manipulating a cumbersome puppet that felt like a ''dead Siamese twin," he says.

But it's his boisterous Italian-American family members, many of whom live in the Boston area, who take the most affectionate hits.

His mother, who decorated the house with purple rugs and a three-dimensional mural that lit up, would serve lasagne shaped like turkey for ''900 relatives" at Thanksgiving, he says in his monologue.

After dinner, when all the food and dishes were put away, she would walk out of the kitchen, slowly wiping her hands on a dishrag.

''I'm going to tell you something right now," Cantone roars in imitation. ''Somebody wound me up todaaaaay! I have not stopped all day. . . . There's a key in my back. Somebody wound me up. Never again! Never again!"

His four uncles, who wore huge diamond-studded pinky rings, were busy watching 20 televisions as they bet and worked as bookies at the same time.

Meanwhile, little Mario was yelling from another room: ''Shut up! I'm trying to watch 'The Wizard of Oz!' "

Cantone's humor is steeped in stereotypes. But the 45-year-old comedian is unrepentant. He flew to Boston this month from his home in Manhattan to show a reporter his childhood stomping ground.

''Whether it's stereotypical or not, it's my life," he squawks over a lobster salad at the Four Seasons. ''Everything I talk about is true."

Cantone's parents are deceased. But his siblings and cousins say they aren't ashamed by the content of the show.

''Get ovvvver it," is all Camille Cantone, Mario's older sister, has to say. A bartender who lives in Malden, she speaks in the same husky smoker's voice that her brother captures in his show.

''The truth is funny," she says. ''Some of the family did get upset because he talked about the gambling. But it was 40 years ago. They're all dead. It's not like they're gonna get arrested."

Mario's clowning is nothing new to the Cantones. When he was 3 years old, he would stand on the coffee table and belt out Judy Garland songs, Camille recalls. ''When he was 10, he directed plays in the garage. He had all these little kids in the neighborhood doing exactly what he wanted. It was the funniest thing."

The extended family would gather for meals every Sunday night, and Mario would entertain everyone with impersonations, says his cousin, Jeanne Cericola, an insurance agent who lives in Everett.

''I remember mentioning narcolepsy, and he was suddenly falling asleep in his chair," she says. ''I kept telling him to stop and then he dropped his face in the macaroni."

Driving through Stoneham in a black limousine, Cantone becomes reflective and reveals that his humor, which can be biting and sarcastic, is fueled in many ways by chronic sadness and anger.

His partner of 14 years, Jerry Dixon, describes the comic as ''quiet" and ''depressed."

''He has a dark cloud over him most of the time," Dixon says. ''Even when things are going well, he's a sad person."

While Cantone can't articulate exactly why he's blue, he points to his mother, who died of cancer in 1981, as a factor. ''She was never emotionally available. I never really heard her say 'I love you.' "

Being gay didn't help the relationship, he says. ''It didn't go over well. She didn't like it."

Still Cantone remains irrepressible. Unannounced, he knocks on the door of his childhood home where the Caturello family now lives.

Mary and Dominick Caturello, who have met Cantone before on similar impromptu visits, allow him to waltz right in.

''We're remodeling!" Mary announces, as Cantone clings to a pole in the basement that's adorned with black and white tile.

''My mother did this," he says, pointing at the tile. ''We used to have wood paneling down here, too. Before the house burnt, there were two rooms here."

Walking into the auditorium at Stoneham High School down the street, Cantone observes a male student performing a solo on stage, and he is flooded with memories.

''I had so much less fear as a kid," he remarks quietly, as students rehearse the spring musical ''Seussical."

''You come out of high school thinking you can do anything. But the mainstream comic world can be tough on comics who are gay," he says. ''It got me on a very slow path. I had a fear of going on stage and being called an epithet,"

Cantone performed at various theaters on the North Shore as a kid and was voted most theatrical in high school. At 16, he did his first onstage comedy act at Cantone's, the downtown Boston restaurant/nightclub his father owned.

''I bombed," he says. ''It was a rock club. Nobody cared."

After graduating from Emerson College with a degree in acting in 1982, Mario moved to New York and hosted ''Steampipe Alley," a local television children's show, for five years.

Since then, he has appeared on Broadway in serious roles, including in ''Love! Valour! Compassion!" and in the musical ''Assassins," as well as at comedy clubs like the Improv.

In 1999, he was cast in what would become his signature role, the ''Sex and the City" gay wedding stylist, Anthony Marentino, who helped Charlotte York select the perfect dress for her fairytale ceremony.

Cantone also created buzz for his ''Ask a Gay Dude" segment on Comedy Central's ''The Dave Chappelle Show."

Later this year, he will appear in what he calls a gay-themed ''Thelma & Louise" comedy, ''Retirement" where he and Peter Falk go on a robbing spree on their way to Las Vegas.

With gay humor so prevalent in his repertoire, Cantone isn't holding his breath for a sitcom deal, despite the success of numerous other stand-up comedians, such as Ray Romano, Bernie Mac, and Jerry Seinfeld.

''I used to think 'Oh, God!' " he says. ''Now I think 'So what?' The fantasy of having a successful sitcom is probably not a reality when you're someone like me. That's OK . . . I think movies are where I'm going next."

Nonsense, says comedian Lenny Clarke.

''Look at Ellen DeGeneres," Clarke says. ''Her show got canceled because she wasn't funny, not because she was gay. 'Finding Nemo' saved her career, and now she has a huge talk show. Aren't we beyond that gay stuff?"

To be sure, there's always the stage. Cantone's family continues to provide fodder.

At his 90-year-old aunt's funeral here two weeks ago, Cantone couldn't contain himself when he heard so many Boston accents. He decided to mock a name he kept hearing in the crowd, Bob.

''He kept saying 'Bawwwb' with a Boston accent after every sentence," says his oldest sister Marion. ''OK, Bawwb. Be right there, Bawwwb.

''After the priest said 'Peace be with you,' he said, 'And also with you Bawwwb.' I just lost it. I had to put my head down and cry."

Suzanne Ryan can be reached at sryan@globe.com