Talking to Alex Edelman about “Just For Us,” coming to Steppenwolf
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In 2021, Alex Edelman played The Den Theatre, a comedy and theater venue in Wicker Park. He wasn’t much noticed.
“I was performing in one of the upstairs theaters, and I went out on the street with my flyers to try and find an audience,” Edelman said in a recent online interview. “I flyered in maybe 50 people. There was an aggressive lack of interest.”
Edelman’s life has massively changed since then.
“Just for Us,” the very solo show that Edelman was developing at The Den, opened on Broadway in 2023 after doing well across the pond in London, attracting sold-out houses at New York’s Hudson Theatre and rave reviews. To most of us who saw it, the show felt like a cross between classic Jewish stand-up and a newer hybrid, storytelling form; it was as if Jackie Mason had developed a podcast with the help of Mike Birbiglia and Ira Glass. The show also was filmed live for an upcoming HBO special, which Edelman says he very much wanted.
Be it stand-up or legitimate theater, Edelman’s quirky but exceptionally funny monologue told the story of how Edelman, who grew up as an Orthodox Jew, found himself incognito at a meeting of ragtag white supremacists in the New York borough of Queens. He even found himself inappropriately attracted to a woman he met there. (The full details of the quixotic narrative are best experienced in person.)
Now Edelman’s show is out on a short, big-city national tour and has landed in a rare, prime winter spot at Steppenwolf Theatre, which has been on something of a hiatus when it comes to its own productions. Edelman is filling the breach before Steppenwolf kicks back into its regular groove.
So how does he define himself? “I guess I like hybrid stuff that’s not too highbrow,” he says. “I like theater. I like stand-up. I like a little peanut butter on my chocolate. I think of myself as doing theater for people who don’t like theater and stand-up for people who don’t like stand-up comedy.”
Surely, like all producers ever, he says his show is for everyone.
“You know the title of the show is a joke, right?” Edelman says. “The idea was that no matter who are you, you should think this show is just for you. That’s the joke.”
Many in the New York audience were Jewish, given how Edelman’s material dissects his Orthodox childhood, poking a kind of loving fun at its strictures and absurdities but, at the core, lampooning antisemitism in a fashion that sometime recalls Mel Brooks’ approach in “The Producers,” a vestige, perhaps, of a more innocent time
Edelman’s New York opening was prior to the events of Oct, 7, 2023, in Israel. Has the feeling of the show now changed?
“I certainly have been in a couple of spaces personally where I have felt fearful and everything feels a lot more fraught now,” Edelman says. “It’s interesting how people settle into tragic situations and doing the show now feels more cathartic. But my job is to take big things, big events, and turn them into concise morsels for people to laugh at. And at least for an hour and a half, you don’t have to look at what’s going on outside.”
“Just for Us” plays Feb. 15-25 at Steppenwolf Theatre, 1650 N. Halsted St.; tickets $62-$102 at 312-335-1650 and www.steppenwolf.org
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.
