Alex Edelman wants to know that you’re having a good time. The 34-year-old comedian, whose nimbly clever solo show “Just For Us” is now on Broadway, describes himself as “solicitous” and “professio…
served as a creative consultant. Aside from a few black stools Edelman pulls up for unseen for white nationalists, he holds the stage on his own.
Wearing white sneakers, black jeans and a shirt buttoned all the way up, Edelman is a vigorous and loose-limbed carousel of gestures . But as he bounds from one corner of the stage to another, his energy is less nervous or hyperactive than confident and curious.
Edelman does, to some degree, seek to humanize a few of his adversaries, like a young woman named Chelsea he can’t help flirting with. But this is not one of those stories that tries to recognize logic in bigotry for the supposed edification of liberal, white audiences. Edelman rather turns to self-reflection, asking why he presumed he might be able to fix a group of grassroots racists. “They’re just Nazis because they haven’t met Alex yet,” he recalls thinking at the time.
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.
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