Review: Jeff Ross: Take a Banana for the Ride on Broadway—When Life Gives You Lemons, Roast Them

In this, our era of great earnestness, it defies the principles of Darwinian evolution that Jeff Ross’s brand of insult comedy has evaded extinction. As the famed “Roastmaster General,” Ross has historically followed the rules of “punching up,” targeting the celebrities who oh-so-frequently are the ones who end up nose-deep in a notes app drafting a public mea culpa.

But the General turns the artillery on himself and his whole family tree in his solo show Take a Banana for the Ride, running at Broadway’s Nederlander Theatre through September 28. Great grandma Rosie gets it just as bad as Bruce Willis ever did (Willis, I’m sorry to say, catches some strays here too), but this deeply personal, moving, and undeniably funny show is first and foremost a love letter to the chaotic people (and pets) that made Ross who he is. The experience of losing them is what he roasts—and there’s really no punching any higher than that.

Take a Banana for the Ride, directed by Stephen Kessler and named for Ross’s smoker-voiced grandfather’s small but memorable piece of loving wisdom, is largely a chronicle of Ross’s greatest losses: his mother at 14; his father at 19; his comedy band of brothers Bob Saget, Gilbert Gottfried, and Norm Macdonald, all within less than a year. It’s not a leave-your-troubles-at-the-door kind of premise, but Ross does explain from the outset that his objective is to get you laughing through hardship, not in spite of it.

At the top of the show, he pokes fun at his recent battle with colon cancer and spends several minutes roasting his own cue ball appearance since losing his hair to alopecia. Laughing at pain is Ross’s superpower, and his glitter-flecked banana suit (courtesy of designer Toni-Leslie James) is his hero’s costume. Don’t suppress your church giggles, everyone. This is the path to enlightenment. If only we’d all join Ross under the fig tree—also known as Clinton Manor Catering.

Clinton Manor was the family business that Ross’s New Jersey mishpuchah encircled throughout his childhood, and it was the epicenter of the Jewish upbringing that taught Ross to take the piss out of everything and everyone in his radius (Beowulf Boritt’s set, encased in picture frames with a chaise lounge and old-fashioned pedestal side table center stage, is an ode to Clinton Manor). In the spirit of Adam Sandler’s “Chanukah Song,” Ross “sings” (I use the verb lightly) an ode to historic Hebraic heavy hitters entitled “Don’t Fuck With the Jews.” It’s the first of many featured moments for pianist and composer Asher Denburg and violinist Felix Herbst (both excellent and given apt treatment by sound designer Daniel Lundberg) who hold their posts stage right and welcome the natural collision between high-brow and low-brow.

The whole show is a perfect salty-sweet-sour mix—and don’t think Ross is above contributing some of the sweet himself. He reads touching letters exchanged between his parents and from his mother to him before her death, and he recounts the tear-jerking story of his Covid rescue dog. But, of course, he does so not without taking jabs at his mother’s cancer treatment or accusing his ragged German Shepherd of being a retired Nazi. His jokes are unapologetic and sharp, but that was to be expected. Less expected is the pure sentiment that even Ross’s roughest jokes can’t undermine, not to mention this king-of-one-liners’ great talent as a storyteller.

When it comes to autobiographical comedy shows, there are many ways to peel the banana, so to speak. Just in the past few years on Broadway, Mike Birbiglia shared his journey with fatherhood in The Old Man & the Pool, while Alex Edelman recounted his brush with neo-Nazis in Just for Us. Ross’s stab at the form harks back to the cozy nostalgia of Billy Crystal’s 700 Sundays—a family story where the characters are flawed but painted with a forgiving sepia (Adam Honoré lends soft lighting while projection designer Stefania Bulbarella fills the set’s decorative picture frames with family photos to add to the wistful scrapbook effect).

Still, this so-called forgiveness is not in the framing of the stories themselves but in the framing of life as an inherently absurd endeavor. Maybe you’re waiting to get your fix of absurdism at Bill & Ted’s Waiting for Godot, set to make its excellent existential return to Broadway this September—the tail end of Ross’s time at the Nederlander. But consider this: Both shows will teach you about how life is deeply unserious, but only one will send you out the door with a snack.