Review: ALEX EDELMAN'S JUST FOR US at Mark Taper Forum

Just For Us is a brilliant, award-winning, one-man comedy show by Alex Edelman at the Mark Taper Forum downtown, coming after sold-out hit runs on Broadway, and in London, Edinburgh, and Melbourne. This is must-see, hilarious stand up tackling identity and antisemitism, and it is hard to think of a more essential show at the moment.

In a charming and thoughtful vein, Just For Us reflects on the ways we can feel supported, nourished, and seen by our identity, yet desperate at times to escape it — and hated by others simply for our existence in ways we cannot begin to fathom. Just For Us is a more powerful show for how understated it is.

Sweet, daffy, hyped up, self-deprecating, incredibly winning, Alex Edelman is a tremendous and engaging presence on stage. Edelman is acclaimed for his hit solo comedy shows, for his writing for speeches, television, and BBC radio, and for his TV appearances on Conan, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, and more. Unlike many comics who seem to be in a competition for who can be the most virulently, unapologetically edgy, Edelman trades in a rather rare commodity these days: his niceness.

Edelman is a gifted storyteller who can populate the entire stage with characters from his Twitter surfing “lying on my back like on otter with my phone”, his Olympian athlete brother competing in the snow sport skeleton “I call him The Frozen Chosen”, his Orthodox family with their long, traditional names “It sounds like we are all in Slytherin”, his childhood in Boston “I come from this keenly racist part of Boston called Boston”, and his spontaneous decision to attend a White Nationalist meeting “As an Ashkenazi Jew, I have a lot of questions about my whiteness.” All the bits about Edelman’s family are pure gold, especially the awkward, delightful saga of his Orthodox father being persuaded to host Christmas for a lonely family friend. What a joyous comedic gem.

There is a lot of uncomfortable and surprisingly delightful humor to be mined in a nice Jewish boy stealth attending a White Nationalist meeting in Queens. One of the funniest moments in the show is a Neo Nazi complaining in the meeting that “Jews are sneaky, and they are EVERYWHERE!” and Edelman saying to the audience that maybe he wasn’t in a great position at that moment to argue with him.

Alex Edelman has a very unique comedic style and presence, and it’s difficult to compare his work to anything in particular. With his child-like curiosity and enthusiasm, Edelman reminds me a little of the great pleasure of seeing Broadway legend Carol Channing live, her zany awkwardness, sweet humor, and sheer lovability. In this thoughtfulness, he recalls the quirk, erudition, and light-hearted whimsy of British comic Eddie Izzard, and the iconic skit “Cake or DEATH?”.  In Edelman’s brilliance and the laugh-out loud, ingenious hilarity he finds in the quagmires of family and identity, he makes me think of Los Angeles local treasure, the genius comic writer and actress Sandra Tsing Loh.

There is a surprising warmth and intimacy in the beautiful Mark Taper Forum theatre that make it a perfect fit for this show. With an innovative circular design by the same architectural firm who designed the iconoclastic Carousel Theatre for Disneyland in the 1960s, the Taper’s over seven hundred seats seem to disappear and create a small, immediate space that makes you feel like you are in a personal conversation with Alex Edelman.

There are no gimmicks, no staging, no visual effects, no screens or props, simply great storytelling. This is an elegantly polished show, thoughtful, deliberate, and reflective, in which all the bits have been rigorously edited, developed, and sculpted into a thing of beauty. Just For Us benefits from a brilliant creative team, including the late, award-winnning British playwright and director Adam Brace, to whom the show is dedicated.

Just For Us is the singular, absolutely essential comedy show you don’t want to miss.

Photos by Matthew Murphy

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