"4/5 Stars! His account of reactionary repartee serves as a framing device for a deeper dive into questions of identity and the limits of empathy. Edleman deftly interweaves disparate tales...into a portrait of the entertainer as a young Jewish man in a polarized society. But he does this without pulling any punchlines: The laughs are plentiful."
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"It’s not hard to ridicule a bunch of bigots; nor, more than half a century after 'Springtime for Hitler,' is the exercise particularly scandalous or groundbreaking, even if it remains surpassingly gratifying when done well. The considerable success of Edelman’s show depends on a second act of infiltration. Cannily, confidently, he turns his brief encounter with this sad-sack anti-Semitic social club into a pretext to examine the much more richly unsettled topic of his own Jewishness...As the show progressed, I found myself more interested in Edelman’s own, troubled 'us,' the one that he implicitly refers to in his title, though he tends to shy away from addressing himself to it."
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It's a fast, funny, thoughtful 75 minutes, packed with stray thoughts that will catch you unawares. (I treasure how he infuriated a UK audience by renaming Brexit "The Great British Break-Off.") This is a highly original approach to stand-up comedy: Edelman's ability to spin humor out of a festering social problem, without trivializing it, is something to cherish.
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Despite the familiar visual trappings--mic stand, performer-blinding stage lights, and a dull curtain backdrop--Edelman's deceptively free-flowing talents hew more towards the monologist Spalding Gray than those of Williams. Like Gray, Edelman is an entrancing storyteller capable of stitching together personal anecdotes into a rich thematic tapestry.
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"The funniest harrowing and touching account of a personal experience you’ll hear this year (and perhaps beyond)...The promising thing about Edelman’s show is that he’s not telling a one-time, nothing-will-top-this story. His Lenny Bruce-like observations of the human condition promise us that there’s more in store from him. And we’ll be looking forward to hearing his take on yet another observation of everyday life."
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I was initially puzzled as to why a man whose full name is David Yosef Shimon ben Elazar Reuven Alex Halevi Edelman would go to a meeting of white supremacist antisemites — unless he was a stand-up comedian who thought he could get a show out of it. And so he has…. leans more toward disparate jokes and funny stories than a focused comic narrative.
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"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...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."
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"Edelman taps into much heftier material than his usual riffs about Koko, the sign-language-using gorilla...Throughout, Edelman emerges as a disarming charmer whom you might imagine could ingratiate himself — at least for a while — even with people who object to his very existence. And one who not only lived to tell the tale, but tells it with wit and flare. Can you believe it?"
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