Alex Edelman signs a comic vignette in Just for Us.
Despite Alex Edelman’s opening caveat that “my comedy barely works if you’re not a Jew from the Upper East Side,” he is one of the rare, masterful stand-up comics who can “cast out” and then successfully “reel back in” a diverse audience. He can take his monologue way off-topic, on a tangent that itself could be a stand-alone show. Although the thrust of Just for Us is his attendance at a white-supremacist gathering, along the way he signs and mimics the distress of a gorilla at Robin Williams’s death (the gorilla really grieved), then quips that Brexit should be called “The Great British Break-Off,” and lovingly, yet mercilessly, spears his family, their Hebrew names, his brother’s Winter Olympics prowess as part of the Israeli skeleton team, and his Orthodox Jewish parents’ finessing of Christmas (including a decorated tree in the garage) to comfort a bereaved Christian friend.
His latest show takes as its jumping-off point his savviness on Twitter. After his feed begins to sprout anti-Semitic comments, he compiles a list of anti-Semites, which, ironically, he titles “JNF (Jewish National Fund) Contributors.” The anti-Semites retort, “Take me off your list.” These white nationalists, Edelman posits, “complain that white people are being erased from history,” that there is a “slow-moving genocide of the white race,” and “reverse racism,” and, he adds, they have a “weapons-grade conspiracy theory.”
Then Edelman gets a tip about a meeting of white nationalists in Astoria, Queens. He decides to attend and almost succeeds in blending in. He jokes about an older woman there who sits at a table constructing an enormous jigsaw puzzle, and he flirts with Chelsea, one of five females who attend the gathering, and to whom he is attracted in an odd sort of way.
Edelman as master raconteur. Photographs by Monique Carboni
Most of the attendees don’t use their real names at meetings when “newbies” attend. Perhaps that stems from a concern that one might be an informer, or someone planted to antagonize the group. Nevertheless, Edelman introduces himself as Alex to “Cortez.” Edelman’s cover as a white nationalist succeeds for most of the meeting, although “Cortez” and other attendees react somewhat quizzically. Despite his very different looks and persona, the comic is a social media expert, which helps him win the admiration of the group, including Chelsea. Edelman jokes about how he inadvertently aids the group’s Jewish outreach.
The white supremacists’ hatred is not restricted to Jews. Edelman notes the group’s blatant racism and their anger that Prince Harry has married biracial Meghan Markle. At the same time, one attendee questions the use of the N-word for Blacks. Edelman wonders, “There’s a spectrum for Nazis?”
As a narrator, Edelman is cocky, self-assured, and educated. He’s the secular son of a prominent Boston Jewish family and the perennial schlimazel, Woody Allen-style—a potentially hapless victim of anti-Semitism in a bizarre scenario that he himself has created.
Director Adam Brace has blocked the performer on the barest of stages, whose stark, redbrick back wall frames the barest of props—a few stools and a microphone. This allows the audience to concentrate on Edelman’s facial expressions and movement—his pivoting head as he utters “Ah hah, ah hah”; his body recoiling in mock wonder, pleasure, or surprise; and his use of sign language. Edelman’s one brief pause in the entire show might have some audience members wondering if he forgot his lines, but that’s doubtful. As his performances vary slightly from day to day, it’s likely that he has reached into his grab bag of mini vignettes to convey the perfect “gotcha.”
Toward the close of the meeting, the attendees discover that Edelman is Jewish, and he describes how “the walls went up.” Wryly, he adds, “Everybody gets up and moves to the far-right corner of the room.” Despite his brief glory as the center of the group’s attention, there is a certain poignancy in Edelman’s story and the underlying pathos and empathy that accompany it. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong people but uses the opportunity to underscore the ludicrousness of the group’s outlook.
They nearly accept him as one of “them,” want to benefit from his grasp of social media, yet quickly turn on him, as they would do to others, based on historically unsupported stereotypes. The anti-Semites/white nationalists don’t have a monopoly on hate and intolerance, yet Edelman shows us how quickly the “us” routs the “other”—to the detriment of all.
Alex Edelman’s Just for Us plays at the Cherry Lane Theatre (38 Commerce St.) through Jan. 8, except for Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve. Evening performances are at 7 p.m. nightly; matinees are at 3 p.m. on December 24 and Saturday and Sunday, except Jan. 1. For more information, contact the box office at boxoffice@cherrylanetheatre.org.
