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. 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. He pulls the audience close with the self-deprecation and then destabilizes the dynamic. 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 rambles about his preference for silly jokes over anything politically incisive, launching into a riff about a gorilla’s friendship with Robin Williams - “Even gorillas were like, ‘This guy is unbelievable’” - and contrasting Williams’s nearly universal audience with his own specific appeal, saying “my comedy barely works if you’re not a Jew from the Upper East Side.” Starting this way, he is perhaps letting air out of a very large balloon of expectations: 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.
Photo: Matthew MurphyĪlex Edelman starts his solo show by bringing its scale all the way down.
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