Isaac was born and raised in Portland, Oregon, where he developed a love for theatre, music, and film. Highlights of his early theatrical career include the amateur premiere of Willy Russell’s musical Blood Brothers, productions of Pirates of Penzance, Once on this Island, The Boys Next Door, and a continuing involvement teaching and directing teenage theatre students with the Young People’s Theatre Project. Isaac studied film, theatre, and music at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California, and graduated with a Bachelor of the Arts in Film Production from Loyola Marymount’s School of Film and Television. While attending Loyola, he appeared in productions of Portia Coughlan and Macbeth. As a member of the Sinatra Opera Workshop, a group sponsored by the Frank Sinatra estate to further education in operatic training, Isaac has appeared in productions of Mozart’s operas Le Nozze di Figaro and Cosi Fan Tutte.

Isaac is also a member of The Meh-tropolis Ballet Theatre’s Character Ensemble in Los Angeles and a member of the Kohl Players, with whom he appeared in the original one-act play, One Sunday in Mississippi written by Linda Bannister and James Hurd.

When he’s not performing the Caveman, Isaac makes his home in Portland. He would like to dedicate his performance to his amazing family who always thought he could do this.

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Comedy review: Battle of sexes gets generous treatment

The theme might be old but the jokes aren't, and a Portland native makes them sing
Monday, April 02, 2007
Richard Wattenberg
The Oregonian

Comedy deriving from the differences between the sexes is nothing new. More than 2,400 years ago, Aristophanes kept his ancient Greek audiences laughing at characters who danced across gender lines.

It's amazing how little has changed. Yet perhaps the way we laugh at those differences has changed.

Take, for example, Rob Becker's hilarious one-man show "Defending the Caveman," having a short run at the Newmark Theatre (it ends Wednesday) with Portland native Isaac Lamb ably playing the role Becker performed for many years following the show's 1991 premiere in San Francisco.

Becker's play, which had a long Broadway run in the mid-1990s and has toured ever since, is his response to the gender anxieties and occasional male-bashing of the 1980s. But it's not a bullish vindication of beleaguered manhood. It's a sensitive, thoughtful, rip-roaringly humorous take on male-female misunderstandings.

Drawing from pop and not-so-pop psychology, anthropology and sociology, Becker offers a view of men and women as products of two very different cultures, two ways of interacting with the world.

Male nature, he suggests, can be traced back to the hunter instinct that motivated the cave man. As hunter, man is locked into the goal of finding and killing game.

Woman's culture, in Becker's universe, is a byproduct of the gathering instinct. Rather than focusing on a particular objective, woman wanders, discovers.
These primal distinctions lend themselves to humorous commentaries on contemporary gender differences. While the female preoccupation with "feel-ly" stuff and shopping and the male proclivity for preoccupied obliviousness and power tools might be the material of old jokes, there's still lots fun to be had here. In the end, however, the intent is not to judge but to enter into and celebrate the differences separating male and female attitudes.

Lamb conveys the geniality of this humor wonderfully. Casually dressed in jeans and a dark green shirt with rolled-up sleeves, he's a burly, unshaven fellow, but even as he lumbers about the stage, he's smooth, agile and frisky -- a likable, everyday-normal kind of guy, able to make affable contact with both the men and women in his audience. He skillfully accommodates himself to Becker's stand-up comedy text but also captivates with his animated facial expressions -- demonstrating the female's angry stare or her playfully flirtatious smile as easily as he models the vacant, befuddled male mien.

“Rob Becker’s Defending the Caveman," the one-man show now playing through Sunday at the Mohegan Sun Cabaret Theatre, produces dozens of belly laughs.

And those laughing the loudest are the women. But not at man's expense, because "Defending the Caveman" is more than funny, it's insightful.

The 100-minute show starring Isaac Lamb puts the differences between men and women into perspective. As Lamb explains, men and women still act as we did in caveman days: Men are hunters and protectors, and women are nurturers and gatherers. Everything we do today is a result of our primal instincts.

Sure, we've heard this theory before; so much so that it's nearly a cliché. But the spin playwright Rob Becker puts on the premise goes much deeper.

Each gender is unique, Lamb says, and once we all appreciate each other for what we are, maybe some day women will stop calling men "donkey holes." (Lamb used another term I can't print in a family newspaper.)

The opening-night crowd Wednesday was about 60-percent women. They laughed the loudest, perhaps gaining insight into why their man doesn't like to talk to them when they're watching TV. As Lamb explains, it's hard for us to do two things at once. That's why we also have to turn down the radio when we are lost while driving.

But Lamb, sort of a cross between Kevin James and Jackie Gleason, helps men understand a few things about women, too. For instance, why women like to shop so much. They can't help it, he says, they're gatherers. That's also why they always know where you left your keys. "Defending the Caveman" is more than a script for Lamb. the audience can relate.

1/7/05

Forget spending hundreds of dollars on therapy and counseling sessions for your relationship problems.

Instead, save some money and a whole lot of time by heading down to ACT Theatre to see Isaac Lamb perform Rob Becker’s wildly popular comedy, “Defending the Caveman.”
Becker’s hilariously insightful play about the ways men and women relate will have you and your significant other roaring with laughter and recognition.

In just under two hours, you will learn what makes men behave like men and women behave like women and hopefully by the end of this delightful one-man show, you will get the message that it’s ultimately our differences that make our relationships stronger.

“Caveman” is the longest running solo play in Broadway history and it was penned by stand-up comedian Becker over a three year period during which he made an informal study of anthropology, prehistory, psychology, sociology and mythology.

Lamb takes the audience on a twisted and comic journey to the days of the caveman.
He observes that the differences between the sexes in regards to their skills, customs, ways of thinking and communicating, date back to prehistoric times when men were hunters and women were gatherers. Through the course of the show, Lamb offers a variety of hilarious situations to prove that the hunter/gatherer analogy still exists today.

He is able to paint pictures for each of his examples, ones we can all relate to and recognize in ourselves, from shopping styles to same sex friendships and TV viewing behaviors. Lamb explains that the consequences of these two separate roles have been many and points out how men hardly notice anything, collect very few details and have only a limited ability to stay focused on one thing at a time.

Women, on the other hand, notice everything, gather tons of details and can easily focus on accomplishing multiple tasks. Women are able to verbalize their thoughts and emotions, whereas men tend to communicate through non-verbal means. So when women get frustrated that men don’t talk about their feelings, it’s not that they don’t have emotions or that they don’t want to share them, it’s just that they aren’t used to verbalizing them and would rather show them with actions or by their mere presence.

Women, Lamb notes, speak an average of 7,000 words a day. Conversely, men speak about 2,000 words.

So, ladies, if you find your man not that communicative in the evening, it simply means he’s out of words and your best bet is to find a girlfriend to burn off your remaining words!

Lamb easily keeps the attention of the audience throughout the show because he is a dynamic, high-energy performer with a great sense of comedic timing. He commands the stage and keeps the pace smooth and quick, adding to the humor of his words with a host of intonations and voice changes, quirky and hilarious facial expressions and exaggerated body movements.

He makes it seem as though the words of the play are his and that the show belongs to him and that’s no small feat.

Although the play definitely offers a defense of men, it’s also a testament to the writer’s respect and appreciation for women, making it a celebration of both sexes.

2/10/06