All That Gomez

Marga Gomez is an established American comedian with a very specific schtick – that of "America's most wanted Latina lesbian comic." She finds a lot of humour within this limited purview, and is clearly a gifted and experienced performer, but ultimately presents a show which is off-kilter and fails to pull it together into a unified whole.

In All That Gomez, Gomez takes her twin identity and runs with it. However, jokes resting on lesbian and Latina stereotypes are hit and miss – some shrewd observation is mixed in with lines about tofu, or gay men as roommates, which Gomez can't do very much with. The stand-up is interspersed with a few comic monologues, including a not too subtle impression of Gomez's overbearing aunt (heavy on the accent) and a delightfully bizarre excerpt from a “lost” diary of Anais Nin. It is in the extended humour that Gomez finds solid footing; the best bits of the show are when she allows herself to build a scenario without needing to drop punchlines every few seconds.

Some of the material is certainly very funny, but Gomez isn't able to gain the momentum she needs to get major laughs. Parts of the patter depend on audience interaction that just doesn't click, although a larger crowd could go a long way towards saving it. Many jokes are lost in translation and therefore fall flat, and one can't help but think that Gomez would be better received on her own turf.