Mark Pitta and Friends

Tuesday night at the Throckmorton Theater in Mill Valley, I had the pleasure of sharing the Green Room with Robin Williams and Dana Carvey and I can tell you that these greats of comedy put their rants on one leg at a time, just like the rest of us. Carvey brought his 14 year old son with him and confessed to producer Mark Pitta that he was nervous as this was the first time his son had seen him perform. No nervousness detected. To the contrary, everything that came out of Carvey’s mouth had the genius of both improv, studied mimicry, ruthless satire and hilarious caricature of every celeb he skewered . Too precious for words was his send-up of Deepak Chopra. I couldn’t stop laughing. Deepak was nailed. If you closed your eyes you would have sworn that Chopra was up there onstage, albeit under the influence of something, but there nonetheless, dispensing his cryptic wisdom to the delight of us all.

A note about “Mark Pitta and Friends”, Throckmorton Theater, every Tuesday night. It doesn’t get any better than this. No other comedy venue approaches the Laughs/Buck metric. The chance of seeing surprise guests like Williams and Carvey is high, but whoever performs has proven himself to Pitta whose keen eye for talent and intelligent wit assures a great show. Mark, himself, a well known standup, is the master of masters of ceremonies, warming up the audience with engaging jokes and jolly schmoozing with the audience.

Mark features musical acts as well, and precedes the fun with video clips shown while the audience is being seated. Tuesday, he chose a collection of vintage TV commercials for toys. I wanted most of them.

The lobby serves up a variety of wines and non-alcoholic beverages as well as luscious chocolate chip and oatmeal cookies and other pastries.

The audience demographic is mid-life critical to senior with some young curve-breakers as well. A warm sophisticated and most important to our ego-starved personalities, very appreciative, intelligent and ready to laugh.

Oh…. I killed.