Just For Us takes us through hilarious anecdotes from Edelman’s life — his Olympian brother AJ, an unconventional holiday season, and a gorilla that can do sign language — but at its center is an astonishing and frighteningly relevant story. After a string of anti-Semitic abuse is directed at Edelman online, he decides to covertly attend a gathering of White Nationalists in New York City and comes face to face with the alt-right abusers. The result is a hair-raising encounter that gives ‘Just for Us’ its title and final, jaw-dropping twist.
How many crackers came to see Alex Edelman’s Just for Us? (I don’t usually gauge audience demos, but…) That crowd was white. How white was it? It was so white you could clear the hall by rolling a jar of allspice down the aisle. Okay, leaving the jokes to the pros: Get your ass—whatever its race and ethnicity—to Edelman’s smart, funny, and surprisingly poignant solo about white resentment and balancing an Orthodox Jewish and goyim-adjacent childhood. Like an Upper West Sider finding his way to a sad, hate-filled apartment in Queens, it goes places.
Edelman performed Just for Us Off Broadway last year. It's a mitzvah that the show has now moved to Broadway for a summer engagement, so more audiences can sit with his uncomfortable truths in a time of increasing anti-Semitic hate. Under Adam Brace's well-calibrated direction, and employing just one mic and three stools, Edelman conjures a roomful of enemies he naively believes he can charm. They don't succumb, of course, but theatergoers do.
Digital Rush
Price: $33
Where: On the Today Tix app.
When: Released on a first-come, first-served basis every performance day at 9 AM.
Limit: Two per customer
Information: Subject to availability.
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