Most of the people who’ve seen Mitchell Anderson’s one-man show, You Better Call Your Mother, were already familiar with at least one part of his autobiographical story. Anderson, 62, has performed it in Jamestown, N.Y., where he grew up, and at his 40th class reunion at Williams College. The show debuted in 2021 in Atlanta, where he’s the owner and chef of the restaurant MetroFresh.
He performed it last year in New York City and Los Angeles, where audiences recognized Anderson from his TV, stage, and film roles in the 1980s and ’90s — in Party of Five, Doogie Howser M.D., and as Richard Carpenter in the 1989 biopic The Karen Carpenter Story.
And at least some in the audience remembered Anderson for the unexpected, very public way he revealed to the world in 1996 that he’s gay and became, as his show’s director once described it, “a poster child for gay rights activism and gay marriage.”
Beyond all that, though, Anderson hopes some audience members next month at the Provincetown Theater might recognize parts of their own lives or of those they love in his personal journey.
“It’s my story,” he says, “but there are so many universal things, both about coming to terms with who you are, whoever that is, and my relationship with my parents. I think my story really opens up their own stories. It resonates with people.”
Anderson will perform You Better Call Your Mother June 13 to 15 as the second act in the Provincetown Theater’s 4-Star Solo Show Festival. The month-long event opens June 6 to 8 with Cody Sullivan’s Town Meeting, the Cody Plays creator’s irreverent look at local government. Tanya O’Debra’s Radio Star, a radio-show-style detective spoof (with Foley sound effects) with O’Debra playing every character, will run from June 20 to 22. Then comic storyteller Phoebe Potts will perform Too Fat for China, about her complicated international journey to adopt a baby, from June 27 to 29.
Anderson has been to Cape Cod before: as a child to visit cousins and as an actor to film scenes on Martha’s Vineyard as the shark-targeted son of Sheriff Brody in 1987’s Jaws: The Revenge. He also vacationed with his husband in Provincetown several years ago. His return this summer is thanks to a Los Angeles actor friend who praised Anderson’s show to Gary Garrison, Provincetown Theater’s managing director.
“We thought a lot of people would be interested in seeing Mitchell,” says Garrison, noting that the theater timed Anderson’s show to coincide with the Provincetown International Film Festival. “It’s always interesting to look into someone’s life who we peripherally know — to get to know them beyond what you thought you knew about them.”
The solo festival tries to represent a variety of voices, Garrison says, and Anderson’s story speaks to the “gay white male of a certain age.”
The title of You Better Call Your Mother was inspired by what a publicist said backstage after Anderson came out as gay in a speech at a 1996 GLAAD Media Awards ceremony. At 35, he was often asked about playing a gay teacher on Party of Five, and he decided to stop avoiding those questions. It was a year before Ellen DeGeneres made headlines. It was also in the midst of the AIDS crisis. Anderson continued his gay-rights activism in more public ways.
Hollywood didn’t offer many parts for gay actors at the time. Anderson moved to New York City and then, after 9/11, relocated to Atlanta to be with his now-husband Richie Arpino and trained to be a chef. Anderson has performed in some plays there since, but his busy restaurant schedule made that complicated. Then, in 2017, his friend Kevin Spirtas persuaded him to play his husband in the After Forever digital series on Amazon, and Anderson was nominated for an Emmy Award.
Facing his 60th birthday in 2021, Anderson was ready to reflect on how he got where he was. “After Forever gave me the confidence to say, you know what, you have a story to tell,” he says. “And coming out of Covid, I really needed an outlet that wasn’t the restaurant.”
What began as a cabaret idea became a two-act musical memoir about life from TV to Atlanta. “It’s the journey of a young person in Hollywood in the mid-’80s trying to find his way, coming to terms with my sexuality in the middle of the AIDS crisis, in a Hollywood that’s super homophobic,” says Mitchell. “I was able to create the life I have at 60 by coming out at a big awards ceremony in 1996. And that changed my relationship with my parents, changed my relationship with who I could be with, and certainly changed my relationship with myself.”
Anderson performs in a gray T-shirt and dark pants with few props: only a table and two chairs. The songs include “Father to Son” from Falsettos, and scenes of his life and family are projected behind him.
Creating You Better Call Your Mother, with help from director Courtenay Collins, was cathartic, Anderson says. So was saying goodbye to his parents, who died after years of supporting his acting career and his decision to leave it. “In the show, I get to examine the challenges and sweetness of my relationships with both my parents,” he says. “Writing the show, I thought, ‘How did I learn from it and how did it all change?’ ”
Beyond acting, Anderson’s life revolves around his two Atlanta restaurants and his activism — donating food and asking customers to support Development in Gardening, which creates gardens for marginalized communities in South Africa. Fans occasionally stop by, but most MetroFresh customers learn of what he describes as his “not hugely famous” Hollywood days from posters and photos he displays in a back hallway.
That wall is more about his memories than his ego, Anderson says. “I do it mostly because I think people appreciate that I had that life and it was an interesting life,” he says. “And now I have this life, and it also is interesting.”
Party of One
The event: Mitchell Anderson’s solo show You Better Call Your Mother
The time: June 13-15, 7 p.m.
The place: Provincetown Theater, 238 Bradford St.
The cost: $35 at provincetowntheater.org, 508-487-7487
Editor’s note: Because of a reporting error, an earlier version of this article, published in print on page C9 of the May 30 edition, gave the title of Mitchell Anderson’s show at the Provincetown Theater incorrectly. The name of his solo piece is You Better Call Your Mother.
