Morgan M. Hurley | Contributing Editor 

Area locals return to MA4

Kathy Najimy’s bed.

That’s where Steve Gunderson and Melinda Gilb — two musical thespians who both grew up in San Diego and have been working together on stages across the country for almost 35 years — first met. The duo brings their “Melinda and Steve Show” to Martinis Above Fourth | Table + Stage on Monday, Feb. 2, at 8 p.m.

Najimy, best known for her roles in “Hocus Pocus,” “Sister Act,” and TV’s “Veronica’s Closet,” also grew up in San Diego.

“Steve probably doesn’t remember, but Kathy and I were doing a show together and she was having a party and everyone was on the bed,” Gilb said. “Then he walked in and that’s how I met him.”

Gunderson started acting at The Old Globe while still attending Crawford High School. He later studied theater in London, and in 1981, moved to New York City, union card in hand.

“You just couldn’t make a living [in theater] back then in San Diego,” he said.

Gilb, a Granite Hills grad still in San Diego, soon followed, landing a play on Broadway and a three-week stint on Gunderson’s couch. The two friends took in a few neighborhood cabaret shows, and after seeing aspects they didn’t like, the seeds for “Melinda and Steve” were sewn.

“When we created the show it was really a way to showcase ourselves … we wanted to give ourselves work,” Gunderson said.

By then Najimy was also in New York, and she and Mo Gaffney, another San Diegan, had started their own off-Broadway show called “The Kathy & Mo Show.” The lives of the four friends continued to intertwine as they traveled in the same circles, lived together on and off, and drew inspiration from one another. They all remain close today.

“The Melinda and Steve Show” first opened at The Duplex in New York City.

“We sorta didn’t like cabaret — it was autobiographical and full of old standards,” Gunderson said. “And I remember this article came out in the paper that said ‘This is what a cabaret act should be …’ So we decided to write our own show that was kind of anti-cabaret, and we basically wanted nothing to do with anything that came before it. In other words, to break all those rules.”

“Melinda and Steve,” though it has morphed over the years as the pair has gotten older and wiser, is more than an hour’s worth of singing, bit characters, comedy and expert musical arrangements.

“Steve is like a prodigy,” Gilb said. “One of the best vocal arrangers that I’ve ever worked with. It is such a challenge because [his arrangements] are hard but once [singers] get it, it’s like the funnest thing to sing; the most glorious to sing. He knows how to match voices and create harmonies. People always comment about how well our voices blend.”

Since its early days on the New York cabaret circuit, the show has taken on many variations. Today, while some of the big high-note numbers and the exhaustive prop and costume changes are a thing of the past and characters and skits have come and gone, many have stayed the test of time.

Two that remain are “Kathy and Kevin,” Melinda and Steve’s ironical “talent challenged understudies.”

“They became more popular than ‘Melinda and Steve’ so we let them have their own show,” Gilb said.

A playful aspect of the act is Gunderson’s presentation of popular songs in a different way than the audience has already heard, like the Beatles’ “Ticket to Ride.” Gunderson rearranged the song to Sonny and Cher’s “And the Beat Goes On,” and in the skit, he is singing it bitterly to Gilb, harkening back to a time when she first left New York — and “Melinda and Steve” — for Los Angeles.

“Instead of just singing it as well as I can, I’m just completely distracted and angry with her,” he said.

When they brought “The Melinda and Steve Show” back to San Diego on the Martinis stage last summer, it sold out quickly, but they hadn’t performed the act in over 10 years. Gunderson says the show is less “anti-cabaret” than its early days, and now just more of what he and Gilb want it to be.

“Now that we’re old we don’t sing like we did when we were in our 20s and 30s but we’re better actors,” Gilb said. “So I think there’s a give and take.”

Today Gunderson lives in Los Angeles with his husband Kaore and their dog Wilbur, while Gilb is back in San Diego, living with her mother and 11-year old son in San Carlos. Both still do a lot of local theater — together and independently — with Gunderson just finishing up a stint in The Old Globe’s “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.” Soon, a Gunderson-produced show based on the work of Harry Nilsson will take the stage at the San Diego Repertory Theatre.

“I love San Diego,” Gunderson said. “I was a kid and I couldn’t wait to get out of San Diego and now when I get to go there, it’s a gift. They really have the best theater in San Diego; there is nothing like it in LA.”

“The Melinda and Steve Show” will be performed at 8 p.m. on Monday, Feb. 2, at Martinis Above Fourth, located at 3940 Fourth Ave., in Hillcrest. Visit martinisabovefourth.com for more information and tickets.

—Reach Morgan M. Hurley at [email protected].