Entertainment

Self-deprecation adds punch to ‘Judy’

Judy Gold’s new solo outing, “The Judy Show: My Life As a Sitcom,” begins slowly. For someone who describes herself as a “6-foot-3 Jewish lesbian mother of two,” Gold’s childhood was utterly banal — at least the way she recounts it now.

Fortunately, the comedian, whose “25 Questions for a Jewish Mother” was an off-Broadway hit in 2006, eventually hits her stride.

We start off in the company of yet another smart aleck with a big mouth telling us about growing up nerdy in ’70s suburbia. That path is so well-trodden, it’s a 10-lane freeway by now. And the show’s big idea — drawing parallels between Gold’s life and the sitcoms that obsessed her as a kid — isn’t much fresher.

As a gimmick, Gold periodically bangs out the series’ theme songs on an upright piano, sometimes tweaking the lyrics to fit the circumstances — think “Here’s a story of a girl named Judith/Born in Clark, New Jersey, off exit 135” to the tune of “The Brady Bunch.”

Fortunately, things improve as we move from Jersey to the Upper West Side, and Gold embarks on both a stand-up career and a relationship with “Shwendy,” a mix of the woman’s real name, Sharon, and Wendy, her alias in “25 Questions.”

At this point, the tale — written, like “25 Questions,” with Kate Moira Ryan — becomes more idiosyncratic, more personal and gleefully self-deprecating.

Though she bellows one-liners at the top of her voice, Gold basically seems like a nice Jewish girl. She gets empathic laughs from her own travails instead of deriding others. With one notable exception: her feisty mother, Ruth, a bottomless font of punch lines. Ruth’s motto? “I came, I saw, I criticized.”

A recurring theme throughout is Gold’s attempts to land her own TV series. At first she tries to sell it as a sitcom, then switches to a reality show. Nothing pans out.

If all goes according to plan, “The Judy Show” — basically an 80-minute pitch — may finally let Gold exploit that mine of hers for good.

elisabeth.vincentelli@nypost.com