“Hmm, new stage,” Alex Edelman said, mostly to himself, near the Thursday night beginning of his Broadway show, “Just For Us,” now making a touring stop at Steppenwolf Theatre, a Lincoln Park venue newly receptive to these kinds of bookings.
Edelman was clocking how he wanted to arrange his scenery, which is basically three stools. Edelman is the son of Elazer R. Edelman, an acclaimed professor of medical engineering and science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a man of science who nonetheless sent his son to a yeshiva, thus gifting him with gobs of material about the contradictory relationship between leaps of faith and critical thinking.
Alex Edelman, who clearly adores his dad, is frank about being neurodivergent and obsessive over geometric details. And to say Edelman is kinetic is to understate. He jumps all over the stage, biting the tops off myriad water bottles, kicking the plastic into the wings, tracing his foot across spilled water, moving his stools an inch to the right, an inch to the left, as if trying to match his layout as precisely as possible to the pictorial memory in his head, the one that cues his recollections.
At one point in his show, which describes how, on some kind of social media-inspired whim, his Jewish self infiltrated a meeting of sad-sack white supremacists in Queens, New York, Edelman describes trying cocaine: He found that it had no additional effect on him whatsoever. Which, if you watch his show, makes perfect logical sense.
It’s funny, too, which is true about any number of moments in a show that did very well on Broadway (I loved it) and now is touring the country. Edelman is part of a new breed of performers treading the line between storytelling and stand-up comedy. They’re comics for the age of podcasts, effecting self-deprecating personas who still can root out an intrusive iPhone, mining their highly educated autobiographies and telling jokes in service of their broader themes. They’re half theater, half comedy and perfectly happy right there, 30-somethings and 40-somethings able to appeal to audience members who’ve slid a little past the prime comedy club demographic.
At various points in his show, I was put in mind of Mike Birbiglia (a friend of his), Ira Glass, Mike Daisey and Spalding Gray, and yet Edelman (a native Bostonian who first found fame in the U.K.) also harkens back to the multi-narrative Scottish comedian Billy Connolly and even to the late Jackie Mason, the spluttering Old Testament of Jewish comedy, always on the edge of giving offense and hilarious right up to the line.
Edelman is clearly ambivalent about many things of which Mason was certain. The larger narratives on view at Steppenwolf mostly involve Jewish identity and its intersection with secular modernity; such questions as whether doing what first seems to be the least Jewish thing (like celebrating Christmas) might actually be the most Jewish thing to do, at least when it comes to values and ethics.
Edelman’s Broadway run was before the events in Israel of Oct. 7, 2023 (and thereafter), and I was interested to see if he had changed how he handles the show’s exploration of antisemitism. He had a little. He eschews divisive politics, he tells us, noting that “I could lose half of you with one sentence about Israel” (a political statement in and of itself that clearly unsettled the audience) but he also asserts that any veering toward the secular could never turn off the inherent Jewish lens through which he sees the world.
The show is filled with such sophisticated ideas about nurture, nature, whatever, but there’s also a fundamental sweetness to Edelman. His love for family and faith emerges even as he lampoons them, mercilessly, and yet the show papers over none of the societal fissures that have emerged in recent weeks.
I’ve always admired performers who can appear vulnerable, receptive and spontaneous and yet can control an audience so profoundly that they can’t help imbibe the artist’s worldview. A marriage of art and craft, you might say. Probably not on the curriculum of the yeshiva, but clearly found at home.
Through Feb. 24 at Steppenwolf Theatre, 1650 N. Halsted St.; running time 85 minutes; tickets $52-$88 at 312-335-1650 and www.steppenwolf.org
ALSO AT STEPPENWOLF
One other intriguing Steppenwolf note: The company’s Merle Reskin Garage Space soon will play host to the Australian sleight-of-hand magician Harry Milas, as produced by Pemberley Productions and Lauren Eisinger Productions. Milas’ intimate show, which has been playing at the Sydney Harbour Bridge since early 2023 and makes its U.S. premiere at Steppenwolf, will seat only 35 patrons and will require signing a non-disclosure agreement. That allows Milas (who has been hired by many casinos to catch cheaters) to teach some of the secrets of mentalists, illusionists and nefarious characters at cards.
“The Unfair Advantage” will run March 26 to April 21 in the Steppenwolf Garage, 1624 N. Halsted St.; tickets $70 and more information at unfairadvantage.show
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.
cjones5@chicagotribune.com
