It’s clear that comedian Jeff Ross does not agree with Sen. Joni Ernst’s flippant assessment that “well, we’re all going to die.”
The self-proclaimed “Roastmaster General” made his Broadway debut Monday at the Nederland Theatre in a one-man show titled “Jeff Ross: Take a Banana for the Ride.” It may be the most sickness and death focused show ever put on a stage and that includes the Pulitzer Price-winning plays “Wit,” by Margaret Edson, and “Angels in America,” by Tony Kushner.
Ross (ne Lifschultz) delivers insult comedy at the New York Friars Club and on the “Comedy Central Roast” TV series, and the opening moments of “Banana” will not disappoint his fans. There’s a rollicking musical number, “Don’t F–k With the Jews,” and, at the long-awaited conclusion, Ross returns belatedly to form by ridiculing members of the audience as he passes out bananas to them. He makes fun of their clothes, their weight, their breasts.
In between these two high points, he spends about 80 minutes treating us to the long illnesses and ultimate deaths of his parents, other relatives, famous friends and a mangy dog he adopted during the pandemic despite the pet’s antisemitic bent. But what did Ross expect? She was a German shepherd.
Death does not become him. Frankly, it’s a bore, as is his fixation on his own health, which went bad from the get-go. This Lipschitz baby had not one but two birth defects. He came into the world with a bump over one eye and a too small urethra. I’m not sure if I got this right, but the doctors, instead of enlarging his existing miniscule pee hole, gave him a new and larger opening in his penis. Ross calls the two openings the Holland Tunnel and the Lincoln Tunnel. He grew up in New Jersey.
More recently, Ross endured chemotherapy and had some of his colon removed, which now gives him a “semi-colon.”
As for the “banana” in the title, Ross believes people need to be more like that fruit because it’s mushy on the inside but tough on the outside.
Stephen Kessler directs.
