Typical New Yorkers, according to the caricature, are second- or third-generation Americans whose parents or grandparents immigrated to America but retain the ethnic and cultural quirks they brought from “the old country”. Curiously, this makes typical New Yorkers all the more patriotic towards the United States and even quite parochial, disdainful of pretty much everywhere else in the world and distrusting of exactly those foreigners who have always made up most of the city’s population (9/11 aggravated this xenophobic strain).

Measured against these criteria, Steve Solomon is a typical New Yorker. This schoolteacher-turned-comedian, creator of the autobiographical one-man show My Mother’s Italian, My Father’s Jewish and I’m in Therapy!, exploits the stereotype at every opportunity – as the title of the production indicates. After touring around the United States, Solomon returned to New York with the play in 2007 and has been performing versions of it off Broadway ever since.

In 2009, veteran South African actor Michael Richard brought the show to audiences across the country and, following that success, he is reprising the role in Johannesburg over the holiday season. Richard’s stage and screen credits are too numerous to mention; suffice it to say he has done everything from Shakespeare to musical theatre, with plenty of comedy along the way. My Mother’s Italian presents particular challenges, however, even to the most seasoned performer – which is ironic, really, as it was conceived by an untrained and largely inexperienced thespian.

Quite simply, the growing popularity of Solomon’s show in America stemmed from his ability to impersonate the long list of characters (family members or otherwise) about whom he wished to vent his frustration and for whom he wished to show his affection. Reviewers have described him as a “mockingbird”, slipping with ease from the thick vowels of his mother’s Italian English to the Yiddish-inflected Russian roots of his father’s accent, or from the hoarse, cough-punctuated twang of his heavy-smoking sister to the southern drawl of a Florida cop.

Richard is a fine character actor and astutely renders the mannerisms (physical and verbal) of these various dramatis personae. It is strange, then, to hear him occasionally losing the accent of Steve, the protagonist at the centre of the madcap domestic drama. This has an unfortunate effect, as it breaks the spell of mimicry – and the comic impact of this show depends heavily on the always-already laughable personality of “Steve Solomon”, the typical New Yorker who got lost in Florida somewhere along the way.

There is no real narrative arc in Steve’s monologue (he delivers it while waiting for his therapist and in between phone calls to his parents) but we are offered, instead, a series of in-jokes and out-jokes. That is to say, the humour in this show stems from audience members either recognising the ridiculousness of their own culture and world view – Jewish viewers laughing at the intricacies of keeping a kosher house, for example – or subjecting to ridicule people who are culturally other.

Some of the latter instances, it must be said, are objectionable: Steve complaining about Bangladeshi cab drivers or the consequences for American travelers of Arab terrorists. It’s okay to be a European foreigner – in fact, it’s endearing – but Asians are just an annoyance. Still, this prejudice is redeemed to an extent when we are reminded that (perhaps precisely because New York is such a melting pot), ethnic prejudices have long been endemic to the Big Apple: witness the love-hate relationship between “the Chinks” (Chinese) and Steve’s paternal side of the family.

Above all, Steve’s low self-image tempers his schadenfreude. In creating My Mother’s Italian, Steve Solomon performed a hyperbolical version of himself and, in so doing, engaged in a kind of self-mockery.

What, then, of Michael Richards performing Steve Solomon performing himself? Unlike Solomon, Richards will not be defined by this role – a good thing as, in the opinion of this reviewer, it is not his best work. But it is still accomplished, and it is entertaining ... and, with a little imagination, it can be enjoyed as a show “typical of New York”.