Mother of a show

Most people fear that dry-mouthed moment when we start to resemble our parents. Maybe it’s the way you organise your bills or passive-aggresively tell people to stay off the carpet with shoes on. Yet comedian Margaret Cho still hopes she has time to reflect something of her own mother.

In fact, she thinks her maturity is in rewind to the point where if she could still have a child, the young sprog would probably have to nurse mama Cho contrary to tradition and practicality.

Her new show at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, Mother, is based on this revelation that while we always grow older, we don’t necessarily grow wiser.

“It’s about that I’m old enough to be someone’s mother but I act like a complete child and why this is happening,” Cho told the Star Observer.

“It’s also a little bit about my mum who I’ve talked about a lot in my work and it’s about the need for gays and lesbians to really try to parent younger parts of the gay and lesbian community, you know the LGBTI community, so we have to be parents to our own community and really try to reach out to younger gay people because they really do need us.”

Cho, 44, seems to take on a few different angles on motherhood but relishes talking about her own mum or ‘mom’, as she says in her American west-coast accent.

“We’re really close and for me it’s really exciting because women in Korean culture at her age are usually very invisible so this is a situation where she is very visible.”
“She’s a big part of my life and a big part of my work so it’s really fun.”

When asked whether she had any issues taking on her parents’ quirks, she replied “That would be really exciting but I’m actually turning into more of a child than I was before, so I’m regressing”.

Cho also touches on the vagaries for same-sex attracted people when that cookie cutter family mould doesn’t quite fit.

“It’s more that when society doesn’t give you those cues that you belong, like if you’re not straight and you don’t get married and have children and that heterosexual life, what do you do when you don’t have those societal cues?”

Cho’s last tour of Australia was in 2011 and while she’s looking forward to returning, she’s particularly excited about something else.

“I have to eat more hamburgers because I can’t believe there is an egg in it… and beetroot.”

Somebody get the lady a burger, stat.

Mother runs six nights in Melbourne from April 16-21 at RMIT Capitol Theatre before heading to Brisbane, Perth and Sydney.

INFO: comedyfestival.com.au