In my opinion, the best kinds of stand-ups offer jokes and amusing personal insights without the audience even realizing they’re watching a stand-up.
I mean, physically of course you’re aware that you’re in an audience or watching something on a screen at home — there’s no way around that — but my personal favorite stand-up routines feel as if you’re at a bar or at home with friends and they’re telling you a really great story. It offers a sense of community that you’re sharing this experience with friends. It offers a sense of bewilderment that you’re hearing a story so far removed from your own experience that you can’t quite decide whether or not it’s true. And, ultimately, it doesn’t matter because it’s funny as hell, and you love every second of it.
That’s what it’s like watching Alex Edelman: Just For Us.
During his set, Edelman walks us through a moment in his life where he willingly entered a clandestine meeting of white supremacists he’d encountered online. He discovers a few commonalities he has with the assembled crew and more than a few gross misunderstandings they have about the world. While he’s relaying these events, Edelman includes bits and pieces of his own life and upbringing within the Jewish faith. Yes, of course, it’s very funny, but it’s more than that. You understand so much about Edelman as a person through his enormous capacity for comedy.
Here, in an interview with Awards Daily, Edelman sits down to talk about the gestation of Just For Us at the Edinburg Festival Fringe (not the Edinburg Fringe Festival, mind you) where Richard Gadd worked through some of the material that would become Baby Reindeer. Edelman also talks about filming his show with a collaborative team that includes Tony-winning director Alex Timbers (Moulin Rouge) and legendary comic Mike Birbigila. Finally, he reveals what it was like receiving a special Tony Award for Alex Edelman: Just For Us and how, above the extremely prestigious honor, it put him squarely within a tremendously talented collective of current theater talent.
Which is entirely fitting considering Edelman’s own enormous talent.
Alex Edelman: Just For Us streams exclusively on MAX.
