Some Atlantans know Mitchell Anderson as the chef who owns MetroFresh at the Midtown Promenade. For others, he is more familiar as a film and TV actor and gay activist who rose to prominence in the 1990s on such shows as Doogie Howser, M.D. and Party of Five. His coming out onstage at the 1996 GLAAD Media Awards was historic; very few Hollywood actors were openly gay at the time.
With his one-man autobiographical show You Better Call Your Mother on July 29 and 30, Anderson will take the stage at Out Front Theatre to share his own story with monologues, memories and some of his favorite songs. The proceeds from the show, directed by Broadway actress and singer Courtenay Collins and featuring musician Nick Silvestri, will benefit the theater.
“The funny thing is, when I approached Courtenay, I told her that I wanted to do a cabaret,” Anderson said in an interview. “I sat down and wrote. And then she said, ‘Mitchell, this is not a cabaret. This is a play.’”
First performed in 2021 at Synchronicity Theatre, You Better Call Your Mother was praised by ArtsATL as one of that year’s best theater shows. Critic Jim Farmer wrote, “Full of optimism and insight, You Better Call Your Mother was a heck of a calling card for its headliner.”
Anderson said he challenged himself to remount the show this year in multiple venues after not staging it at all in 2022 because of his work at MetroFresh, where customers may not be aware of his past.
“The fun thing about this performance, especially after 20 years away from a day-to-day show business career, [is that] it kind of reminds people that I’m an actor,” Anderson said. “And, if they didn’t know that I sang, it gives me a fun opportunity to put that back out there.”
So far, he has performed You Better Call at the United Solo Theatre Festival in New York, and he will stage it in his hometown of Jamestown, New York, later this year.
He originally wrote the play as a way to celebrate his 60th birthday. The show marks his tremendous accomplishments, but it also focuses upon his family relationships, as the title suggests.
“The show explores my own personal knowledge of who I am and who I was, and that journey of self-discovery also includes my relationship with my parents,” he said. “I feel blessed that at the end of my parents’ lives, they really saw me and were proud of me.”
In some scenes, Anderson embodies his younger self, restaging conversations from his life.
“There’s a scene where I come out to my parents,” he said. “I’m in that room; I’m talking to Mom and Dad; I’m having an emotional reaction as my 23-year-old self.”
Additionally, there are moments in the show where he explores how his grandmother first exposed him to the arts and theater when he was 8, inspiring him to become an actor.
“In a way, it follows a linear timeline and takes, essentially, chapters of my life,” Anderson said. “It lays out the road map to how I got where I am now.”
This includes moments where he sought leading-man roles in Hollywood of the 1980s and 1990s, initially keeping his homosexuality a secret despite being in a long-term relationship. He said friends in Los Angeles encouraged him to be open about his sexuality.
Eventually, his character on Party of Five was written as gay, and members of the press would ask him what it was like to play a homosexual character as a straight actor, which prompted Anderson to bravely speak his truth.
“It’s been an amazing process — the sort of deep dive into those moments I’ve described in the play,” he said. “The reason that the play works on so many levels, not just for 60-year-old gay men, is that it resonates. It’s my story, but my story — like all of our stories — can be universal.”
His relocation to Atlanta, MetroFresh and his long marriage to hairdresser and photographer Richie Arpino are also part of his story.
Though there have been hard times in his life, the show is filled with joy and celebration, Anderson said.
“I have incredible gratitude for all of who I was: the hardships, the complications, the difficulty but also the amazing joy and incredible people I met along the way and the path that I ultimately decided to take,” he says.
“To be able to look back at my 26-year marriage to Richie — and know that it is only possible because of all that came before it — is amazing,” he says.
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Benjamin Carr, a member of the American Theatre Critics Association, is an arts journalist and critic who has contributed to ArtsATL since 2019. His plays have been produced at the Vineyard Theatre in Manhattan, as part of the Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Short Play Festival and at the Center for Puppetry Arts. His novel, Impacted, was published by The Story Plant in 2021.
