“Lift Up Your Skirt”

Lift Up Your Skirt
Kathy Najimy
Feinstein’s at the Nikko

This one-woman created and performed ‘play’ is a delight and a heart-warmer.  Kathy Najimy tells not the story of her life but, as she says, ‘stories of my life.’  These stories are funny, intriguing, and usually with a message.  They sometimes linger a bit too long in the telling; but the laughter they engender in the process more than makes up for any circuity of route.  Najimy realizes that her audience is 95% (or so it seemed) gay and lesbian, and she delivers to that audience with targeted humor and pointed messages of support and love.  Particularly meaningful is a story inspired by her aunt who has a gay son.  Najimy becomes the elderly lady who recounts to her unseen friend Carol of two weddings she recently attended: one ‘lawful’ of her niece who is marrying ‘in the driveway’ for the third time with all the relatives attending and one ‘outlawed’ of her favorite nephew ‘marrying’ his partner of nine years with no relatives other than she there.  The story is funny, sad, too true, and very powerful in her telling.

Supposedly set to go to New York for an off-Broadway production, Lift Up Your Skirt is well-worth the effort to see.