'Jeff Ross: Take a Banana for the Ride' Broadway review — comedy show cuts to the heart of a roastmaster
Read our review of Jeff Ross: Take a Banana for the Ride, the Broadway-debut solo comedy show by Jeff Ross, known to fans as the Roastmaster General.
The material of Jeff Ross, the comedian also known as Comedy Central’s Roastmaster General, is often unprintable. A clip from one of his early televised celebrity roasts opens the show, played on a large LCD screen in a gaudy gold frame. Made at the expense of Sandra Bernhard and Bea Arthur, the bit is vulgar, a bit transphobic, and skating on the edge of cruel. Ross has made his reputation teetering on transgression and modernizing a kind of Don Rickles-esque insult comedy, where a joke's tension isn’t exactly the punchline itself but the velocity at which it is delivered.
Thus, it is pleasantly surprising that Ross’s new solo show Jeff Ross: Take a Banana for the Ride is very silly, disarmingly sweet, and engagingly straightforward. To have built a reputation on potty humor that also wields the toilet seat like a baseball bat is impressively revealing in terms of what made the comic who he is. He lost his parents in his teens (his mother died of leukemia complications when he was 14, his father from a brain aneurysm five years later), and he reads letters from them to the audience. They convey not only the tenderness that his parents felt for one another (and the hurdles they worked through to maintain that relationship), but also the value Ross holds for how humor and memory are intimately connected.
Ross describes his family as one full of ball-busters. His adolescence was shaped by working at their catering business, with staff members and relatives alike elbowing each other in the ribs. He skims over the details of his trajectory into comedy fame, from early club dates to his first Letterman appearance to an unpleasant encounter with a predatory club booker — which, like his other stories, is meant to show his resilience as a performer, and Ross opts to not interrogate its implications too deeply.
But Ross's bracing sincerity about his experiences — of loss, love, and care — and how they shaped him ultimately avoid the cliched “older comic tells younger audience to stop being so sensitive” tirade, even as he repeats the importance of developing a thick skin and learning to laugh at oneself. Rather, the tragedies of his life have offered him a keener sense of how timing works in comedy. Is a joke ever too soon? Does defusing the tension in a moment of grief undermine those feelings, or is it a way to cope and transform them?
Ross’s performance of Banana vacillates between a preparedness that sometimes comes at the expense of spontaneity (which is reignited during some crowd work) and a genuine engagement with the emotional timbre of the show. It feels like another side of Ross that even he’s getting used to. As often as he delivers jokes, both new and recycled from throughout his career, that are pointed and lean towards edgy, he remains a jovial presence, his cadence bouncy in the best moments, like a bit about seeking a sign from his parents from the afterlife.
Ross talks about his recent battle with colon cancer, his adoration for his late uncle, and his grief over losing three close friends: Norm Macdonald, Bob Saget, and Gilbert Gottfried. It becomes clear that, after all these years of material that verges on heinous, Ross is a softie, his brand of insult jokes derived from a love of people and the world around him — even if it’s hard to see — and a desire to see people surprised. Though Ross's roasting may not always work, Take a Banana for the Ride cuts to the heart of a roastmaster.
Jeff Ross: Take a Banana for the Ride summary
Developed over the course of three decades, Take a Banana for the Ride sees Ross explore his family history, how his parents gave him his sense of humor, how he developed his resilient sense of humor, and the community that keeps him alive and roasting.
The show’s title comes from his grandpa, who always gave Ross a banana when traveling on the bus, just in case he might need it for his journey: towards stardom, success, and, in a way, finding his people.
What to expect at Jeff Ross: Take a Banana for the Ride
There’s a little bit of a cabaret show feel to Take a Banana for the Ride. Ross is aided by musical director and pianist Asher Denburg and violist Felix Herbst, who underscore both Ross's speaking and a couple goofy songs (that naturally toe a transgressive line). They give the show an intimate, chummy atmosphere despite the Broadway-sized house.
He's also flanked by graphic design (by Stefania Bulbarella) that's useful to display a marathon of Ross’s family photos and videos, as well as fragmented sections of the letters he reads, but at times it feels redundant. Ross’s material, and the earnestness with which he presents it, is more than enough.
What audiences are saying about Jeff Ross: Take a Banana for the Ride
As of writing, Jeff Ross: Take a Banana for the Ride has a 77% audience approval rating, compiled from 32 reviews from theatregoers on Show-Score.
- “Not aware of Ross’ roasting and comedy, I was surprised both at the length of his career and all that he offered in this show.” - Show-Score user Patrik M 4
- “Jeff Ross roasts a little, but mostly tells emotional family stories engulfed in jokes. This is both great, but as it is a one-note rollercoaster, at times minor [sic] tedious.” - Show-Score user aka
- “Jeff Ross is funny, emotional, and vulnerable as his one man show takes the audience through his life with the loss of friends and family. See it if you want a pleasant surprising funny evening with a roast master and bananas.” - Show-Score user Fancastik
Read more audience reviews of Jeff Ross: Take a Banana for the Ride on Show-Score.
Who should see Jeff Ross: Take a Banana for the Ride
- Audiences who have dealt with personal tragedy, like the loss of a loved one or struggles with life-threatening illness, and are looking for catharsis will find Ross’s perverse humor surprising and amusing.
- Fans of the solo show genre will find, if not a revolutionary take on the form, a more than competent iteration that plays the recognizable notes with expertise.
- Fans of Jeff Ross will be charmed and moved by a more vulnerable and earnest side to him and his humor.
Learn more about Jeff Ross: Take a Banana for the Ride on Broadway
Jeff Ross opens up, and while he doesn’t revolutionize the grief solo show, he nonetheless invites the audience to see a new, more tender side of a comic whose career was built on put-downs and crassness. While aspects of Ross's edginess are intact here, they’re vessels to reveal his soft, introspective side.
Photo credit: Jeff Ross in Take a Banana for the Ride on Broadway. (Photos by Emilio Madrid)
Originally published on