Comedy: “Just for Us,” written and performed by Alex Edelman at SoHo Playhouse
I hate to be late. Being any place at the appointed hour is already too late for me. So how is it that I’ve never heard of Alex Edelman until now?
For those of you who don’t know (and I didn’t), AE is the sharpest standup comic around. In 2014, he became the first American in 17 years to win the Best Newcomer award at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. In 2020, he began hosting Saturday Night Seder, a YouTube program that raised $3.5 million for the CDC Covid Relief Fund. And he’s a proud Jew.
In Just for Us, his latest jam at SoHo Playhouse, AE takes on white nationalists. Browsing Twitter, he finds an online invite to a “white pride gathering” in Queens. (“The most diverse place in the world!” he wonders aloud, gobsmacked.) He takes us, at his antic, mile-a-minute pace, through his undercover one-night adventure with these nut jobs, which includes an elderly lady who does million-piece jigsaw puzzles of racists. But not before taking a gazillion sidesteps to discuss his Orthodox Jewish upbringing in Boston, the dilemma of Christmas vs Hanukkah, et al.
Nobody in recent memory has made me double over in laughter while making me think like AE. So go already. And do it before he becomes the next host of the Tonight Show, and then it’ll be too late to say “I knew him when.” Like me, you’ll hate yourself for being
late.