Alex Edelman: Just For Us Broadway Reviews

Just for Us proves extremely well crafted, as one hopes it would be after being performed on and off for nearly five years. He begins the evening with an anecdote about how Koko the Gorilla related sadness upon hearing of the death of Robin Williams after having met the comedian only once. If you’re wondering how that connects with the rest of the piece, Edelman provides the answer toward the end of the show, followed by the sort of mic-drop capper that brings it to a triumphant conclusion.

Did you hear the one about the Orthodox Jewish standup comedian who crashes a meeting of white supremacists and turns the incident into the nucleus of his one-man show that’s now on Broadway? That’s the two-second backstory of Alex Edelman’s tangy, topical, and, best of all, laugh-out-loud solo work, Just for Us. It’s that rare theatrical production that doesn’t just live up to the hype — it exceeds it.

It says much about the genius—and Alex Edelman’s rollicking, must-see Broadway debut show Just for Us (Hudson Theatre, to Aug 19) is a work of true genius—that at the end of this superlative 75-minute solo comedy show, after his identity as a Jew has been revealed to the group of New York City Nazis whose evening meeting he has infiltrated, that their boiling-over anger at his subterfuge and his eventual ejection from the room leaves him feeling downcast.

Alex Edelman has built quite the reputation over the last few years, with sold-out comedy shows and knock-’em-dead late-night performances, honing material for a Broadway debut that does his reputation proud. Just For Us, opening tonight at Broadway’s Hudson Theatre and running through Aug. 19, might seem as unlikely as the WTF story that forms the basis of Edelman’s performance. A stand-up comedy routine without the usual visual and special-effects embellishments that accompany trips to Broadway, Just For Us lands on the theatrical stage with no need for anything but sheer story-telling bravado, energetic direction (by the late Adam Brace, with Alex Timbers credited as creative consultant) and a terrific yarn.

Questions at the show’s heart, about the origins and limits of empathy — where we get it from, and to whom we owe it — would benefit from a slight downshift in pace, to lend them greater heft than the brisk clip of laughs. Then again, treating tough truths with quick humor would seem like another defining feature of Edelman’s inheritance.

On Broadway, it’s the summer of Alex. Edelman, that is. As the headliner of “Just for Us,” Edelman confirms he’s one of the funniest minds of his generation. Or maybe any generation. By virtue of numerous engagements — off-Broadway, across the sea, on NPR, at D.C.’s Woolly Mammoth Theatre — “Just for Us” has been chiseled to diamond-cut perfection. It had its official opening Monday night at the Hudson Theatre, a joyous 90-minute excursion through Edelman’s insights and autobiography. And framed by an event Edelman thrust himself into, horrifying and fascinating and pathetic, that gives “Just for Us” a riveting topicality.

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.

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.

With quickfire delivery, Edelman recollects how following anti-Semitic Twitter accounts leads him to bravely go where few Jews have gone: a White Nationalists meeting in Queens, New York. Dodging interrogations by its attendees, he offers a lucid and laughable account of what happens next.

The core of Just For Us is Edelman unwinding this central story of what happened at that meeting, interspersed with frequent tangents about his life and upbringing in a religiously observant Jewish family from Boston. Though similar to a stand-up comedy routine, Just For Us' focus on this meeting gives it a theatrical aura worthy of the Hudson Theatre (especially when Edelman assembles stools on stage to mimic the semicircle formation he remembers), and there's a lot of physicality with the performer running back and forth. He's an energetic, self-deprecating raconteur whose stories are also quite thought-provoking.

With the proliferation of stand-up comedy specials on streaming television (yes, I mean you Netflix), it might seem outrageous to suggest you pay Broadway prices to see “Alex Edelman: Just for Us,” which has landed at the Hudson Theatre for a nine-week engagement after a year of a various Off-Broadway runs. Do it anyway!

Edelman first found fame on the U.K. comedy circuit and he has been writing of late for BBC Radio comedy shows or, as he puts it, “podcasts for the dying.” As such, he does write and tell actual jokes, far more explicitly than Birbiglia. “Dumb jokes,” by his own description. These gags are often hilarious. My favorites were the gentle jabs at his brother, Adam, a four-time Israeli national champion in the bobsled-like skeleton event. ”Shul Runnings,” or “The Frozen Chosen” are what Alex calls his brother’s team. Silly, sure, but humanizing at the same time.

Charming, likeable, humorously self-effacing, Edelman is meticulous in detailing the oddness and incongruity of his encounter, and mining the comedy of it. But he is also continuing an age-old Jewish tradition –employing humor as a shield, but also as a weapon, against the massive irrational hatred.

This is, as most audience members will know going in, a show about a Jewish comedian who ended up going to a white-nationalist meeting So why are we starting by imitating a zookeeper describing celebrity deaths in sign language? Because Edelman’s opening gambit reveals itself to be cannily constructed. He pulls the audience close with the self-deprecation and then destabilizes the dynamic. He turns things around and makes the show all about his need, as a comedian, to appease, which reacts nauseatingly when it comes in contact with Nazis. This is a crowd-pleasing, often hilarious show, with a time bomb labeled “Is it good that I am here making you laugh?” at its center.

And even though he’s telling a story about white supremacy, you are. That’s the glory and also the slight hitch of “Just for Us,” which opened on Monday after runs in London, Edinburgh, Washington and Off Broadway. No, it’s not Ibsen, a dramatist rarely noted for zingy one-liners. But it’s not silliness either. Despite its rabbi-on-Ritalin aesthetic, and its desperation to be liked at all costs, the show is so thoughtful and high-minded it comes with a mission statement. Edelman wants to open a conversation about the place of Jews on the “spectrum of whiteness,” he recently told my colleague Jason Zinoman, “without having a conversation about victimhood.”