Jeff Ross peels back layers of comedy in 'Take a Banana for the Ride'

The "Roastmaster General" gets personal in his Broadway-debut solo show, but his stories about family and loss connect more closely with roasting than you might think.

Comedian Jeff Ross has never been on Broadway before, but he's been playing a character on stage for decades. That's how you know he belongs here.

Best known to fans as the Roastmaster General, the New Jersey-born Ross has made a career out of crafting perfectly barbed insults that hit smack in the gut and the funny bone at once. But during our interview about his Broadway-debut solo comedy show, Take a Banana for the Ride, Ross revealed he's loath to take those skills off stage or put down anyone who doesn't ask for it.

"You don't want to roast everyone all the time, or then the people will fear me," he said. "It's easier for me to roast myself [...] I want to be welcome in this community."

That's why, when he roasts theatregoers at the end of Banana, it's strictly on a volunteer basis. Even then, he said, the purpose of the roasts is to connect with the audience, to help them let go a bit and laugh at themselves. Letting go is an overarching theme of the show, which is otherwise a comic departure for Ross: He opens up about how humor has helped him deal with the loss of his parents as a teenager and of close friends as an adult.

"I have more wisdom now. I've been through it. I have more emotional stability than I had as a young guy, so I can sustain eight shows a week," Ross said.

The show's title is a piece of travel advice from his grandpa, who'd send a younger Ross off on the bus to New York comedy gigs. Ross is simply trying to continue the chain of delivering audiences something — a piece of wisdom, a feeling, even a witty roast — that they'll take with them into their life outside the Nederlander Theatre.

"My grandfather used to talk about 'world-beater energy,' and the show has world-beater energy," Ross said. He shared more with New York Theatre Guide about how Take a Banana for the Ride fits into his Roastmaster career, the audience response to the show during its pre-New York tour, and his long-standing love of Broadway as Banana enters its limited run through September 28.

Get Jeff Ross: Take a Banana for the Ride tickets now.

Can you share a bit about the background of this show?

I started writing this show as a young comic, but I didn't have the emotional fortitude to keep it going. It's a deep show, and I brought it into my current brain, and it spit it out with music and storytelling, and it's immersive. If you love the roasts, you're going to love this show, but if you just love Broadway and a good story, you're going to love the show. It's going to surprise you.

Why did you want to revisit this material specifically?

I lost three buddies recently, all within eight months: Bob Saget from Full House, a great guy; Gilbert Gottfried, who played the parrot in Aladdin; and Norm Macdonald from Saturday Night Live. [...] That's a big hit to take. How did I deal with loss as a young man when my parents passed away? How did I bounce back?

I started to put it all together and realized I still have some of the same methods of bouncing back and using humor to go on with your life and not just survive, but thrive. I wanted to keep their names alive and their spirit alive, and I wanted to entertain people, but I also wanted to give them something that would help them.

Has anything about your use of humor to cope with grief changed over the years? Do you use a different kind of comedy, or talk about it differently?

I've been wearing a bruised banana suit [in the show], and it's like a suit of armor for me. As a performer, it gives me a layer of protection emotionally from some of the things I'm talking about. When the show's over, I can take the suit off and leave it in my dressing room [and] go have a regular life.

I'm not sure I understood that as a young comic. I would just wear the same clothes on stage, off stage. My life was the stage. [...] Now, I've learned how to protect myself a little bit more.

The actual idea of loss, I felt the same way then as I do now. As human beings, we mourn, but you can't mourn forever. Then a part of you dies. That's not fair. You want to be able to move on and bounce back. In the show, I try to give some mechanisms to do that.

Bananas conjure the idea of thick skin, which you mention a lot in interviews. How did that become your mantra of sorts?

It came over time. Roasting people, if you're going to dish it out, you'd better be able to take it, or else you're the worst hypocrite in the world. So if I was going to roast people looking like me — looking like a Jeff Bezos blow-up doll — I needed to be able to take the jokes too.

And when you go through stuff early in life, you need to have thick skin. I went through loss, and sometimes it would be hard to get close to people.

Comedy and roasting [...] allowed me to do something healing and fun and cathartic with my life experiences. I didn't want to be sad; I wanted to be a happy person!

You roast audience members in the show. How do those interactions connect to Banana's more personal material?

Some of the themes of the show are about a health crisis I have been going through. It's not just the fight we go through as individuals; it's the people around you that help you through it. It's the army.

For me, the audience is part of that army. The audience gives me purpose, gives me a reason to eat less red meat, a reason to get up in the morning and get healthy.

It's a two-way thing: Just as much as the audience needs to laugh, I need to make them laugh. That might sound corny, but it's gotten me pretty far. It's gotten me to Broadway!

Why did you want to bring this show to Broadway?

I always wanted to do Broadway growing up. I was fascinated by the musicals, the plays, but I never saw a place for myself because I'm more of a storyteller, more of a writer. And then I saw Jackie Mason do a one-man show. Then I saw Billy Crystal do a one-man show, and more recently, Alex Edelman and Mike Birbiglia. And I'm like, "Let me go back and look at that show I was writing 30 years ago."

Can you share more about a theatre experience you had as an audience member that moved you?

I like musicals about orphans and poor people. I loved Annie and Oliver! and Fiddler on the Roof. They get evicted from their house! That's the stuff that hits me hard.

M. Butterfly [with] John Lithgow and BD Wong was one of my favorite experiences as a young theatregoer. I just saw Call Me Izzy — Jamie Wax wrote a beautiful play. And I like fun stuff! I just saw & Juliet; Joey Fatone invited me, and I laughed so hard.

I'm a good audience, so that makes me a better performer because I know what people want to see. I know what makes them laugh, and I want people to remember the jokes the next day, like a doggy bag of jokes. Having gone to so many shows throughout my life, that's given me an understanding of what's going to work.

Get Jeff Ross: Take a Banana for the Ride tickets now.

This interview has been condensed and edited for length and clarity.

Photo credit: Jeff Ross for Take a Banana for the Ride. (Photos by Robyn von Swank)