My thoughts on "Old Jews Telling Jokes"

[RaisedOnMusicals]

Posted: 5/23/12 at 5:49pm

So I just saw the show, and it's funny, plain old laugh out loud funny, start to finish.

Did you ever hear a joke, even a one liner, and say to yourself, "I just HAVE to remember that one"? Well, here there about 80 like that, and just as you finish trying to remember one you're being assaulted (in the best possible way) with the next, like machine gun fire that kept many in the audience (including a woman from the UK who was sitting next to me who I'm pretty sure was not Jewish) literally doubled over in laughter. The show was perfectly cast, and they delivered with precision timing and warmth, even when telling jokes with some words that you might not be used to hearing outside of a locker room. (And just seeing Marilyn Sokul as a sheep in heat while acting out one of the jokes was worth the price of admission.) In addition, watching the cast members react to each other, often in anticipation of what they knew was coming, was a riot.

I (along with the rest of the audience) had heard many of the jokes before, but it didn't matter one bit because seeing the jokes acted out rather than simply hearing them "told" gave them a completely new life. The dialogue necessary for many of the jokes is spoken between (and occasionally among) the joke's characters, not just related.

This is not "Death of a Salesman", but it's 80 minutes of fun at off Broadway prices. When it was over, I happened to run into Peter Gethers and I asked him how the show might attract those outside the obvious demographic. He said that his fantasy marketing campaign would be: "Everyone knows that Jews are funnier than Mormons." Now THAT'S funny.