American comic Alex Edelman is a fully-fledged Anglophile. He fell in love with the people – and Great Britain – after coming over as part of an English Literature course and becoming enamoured with the comedy scene here. Then, from not ever doing a stand-up set, he won The Best Newcomer Award at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2014 and never looked back, writes Michael Holland.
Finding himself based at Kings College London in that auspicious final college semester he frequented the capital’s comedy clubs and remembers, ‘All these British comedians kinda looked after me.’
Alex’s love affair with Britain had begun. ’It’s where the whole thing started for me,’ he says. ‘I don’t think I’d have a career if it wasn’t for the UK… I wasn’t working as a comedian before the Edinburgh award, I was just scraping by doing freelance writing and advertising until the award made me go full-time as a comic… I thought, well, I really love it here so why don’t I have a go and see if I can make it work, and if I can, well, lucky me.’
The logic behind this massive leap of faith was, Alex recalls, ‘I might as well try something that I love and see if it goes any sort of way and if it does, then hey-ho, and if not I’ve had a good go at it.’
But once Alex did make his decision he had the full support from his family, which really is a household of doers, doers that include a lawyer, a biomedical engineer who was nominated for a Nobel Prize, and an Olympian, and that support was for Alex to live out his passion for comedy. His family, in fact, turn up in a sketch he does on being ‘the least interesting person in my family’.
Alex always wanted to write, hence the literature studies; one of his first jobs was writing the kids’ newsletter for the Boston Red Sox, the baseball team he has supported since boyhood. Now he writes for television and, of course, his award-winning comedy shows that sell out wherever he performs them. But whereas writing is what Alex loves, it is performing that is now his main job and already this year he has done around 200 solo shows.
The show he will bringing to London is Just For Us which is based around his urge to seek out those internet trolls with their anti-Semitic abuse and how he found himself at a White Nationalist meeting in New York City. “It was illuminating,’ he says, though I would have thought it rather scary at the thought of being caught out.
Alex went on to say how he gets trolled online for being Jewish and that it is worse now since Kanye West praised Hitler recently. And even here at the Vaults at Waterloo someone threw a beer at him after a show, so racism is still a blight on society.
An earlier version of Just For Us got nominated for Best Show at Edinburgh in 2018, so this is now the fine-tuned, sleeker and slicker model that has already had good reviews in New York and Washington, DC.
A highlight of this tour is that his comedy heroes have been along to see it: Jerry Seinfeld, Steve Martin, and Billy Crystal were the biggest name-drops in a long list of legends. ’It’s going rather well, thank God,’ says Alex modestly.
Getting back to Alex’s Anglophilia, he says the best comedy clubs are here and when I asked for his comedy influences he ran off several British comedians: Stephen Fry, Stewart Lee, Josie Long, and Bridget Christie before he got to our contemporary comic playwrights Alan Ayckbourn and Alan Bennett, plus the mighty Jez Butterworth was added. Alex Edelman is fast becoming more British than most Brits I know.
Just For Us is directed by Adam Brace who directed his previous shows, so they know each other well and know they can make good work together, which bodes well for us.
I asked for a final word: ’I love doing this… it’s such a great job.’ I think we are going to love Alex Edelman doing it.
Menier Chocolate Factory: 53 Southwark Street, London, SE1 1RU from 11th January – 26th February. Times: 7.30pm, 3pm matinees. Admission: £29.50 – £39.50.
Booking: 020 7378 1713 (£2.50 transaction fee per booking)
www.menierchocolatefactory.com (£1.50 transaction fee per booking)
