Broadway Review—Jeff Ross in “Take a Banana for the Ride”

Take a Banana for the Ride

Written and performed by Jeff Ross

Directed by Stephen Kessler

Performances through September 28, 2025

Nederlander Theatre, 208 West 41st Street, NYC

jeffrossbroadway.com

Jeff Ross in Take a Banana for the Ride (photo: Emilio Madrid)

If you thought comic Jeff Ross, best known as the Roastmaster General who’s made brutal fun of celebrities for years on Comedy Central roasts, would come to Broadway with his insult flag flying, you might be surprised by Take a Banana for the Ride (yes, he explains the offbeat title). Sure, Ross spits out some blisteringly nasty remarks—and even shows an over-the-top putdown of both Sandra Bernhard and Bea Arthur, from a long-ago televised roast, before he takes the stage—but keeps them to a minimum, considering his reputation. Banana instead is an autobiographical tale of how his family life in Newark put him on the path to standup comedy.

Ross grew up as Jeffrey Lifschultz, saying that his last name “is an old Hebrew word. It means, ‘Hey, you ought to change that’.” Working in his dad’s restaurant, Ross says that he got his work ethic from both parents. For 90 minutes, Ross spins an entertaining yarn that’s often hilarious and even, at times, poignant. But for such a tart-tongued performer, Ross often gets sentimental discussing his family, close friends and even the German Shepherds he adopted during the pandemic—and whom he jokingly named Ausch and Schwitz—even getting the audience to bark a collective “Aw!” when he brings one of his pups onstage.

There are sharp jokes scattered throughout as Ross reminisces about his mother, dad and grandfather, “Pop Jack,” with whom Jeff lived while trying to break into the comedy world. The show’s title comes from Pop Jack, who, Ross says, would give him a banana when Ross went into the city to perform at clubs, saying, “You never know when you’ll need one, so take the banana for a ride. You never know what’s going to happen: you might get stuck in traffic, you might need some potassium, you might need it for low blood sugar—and in a pinch you could use it as a dildo or if you get sad, turn it sideways: it’ll remind you to smile.” 

He candidly admits that bananas can get mushy inside, and a few times during a show where Ross skirts sappiness, I admit I wanted to hear him go off on a roasting tangent. But that’s not what he’s going for with this performance—he had a close call when he was recently diagnosed with cancer, and he also lost several close comedy friends: namely, Norm McDonald, Gilbert Gottfried and Bob Saget. Director Stephen Kessler helps pace what is essentially a long monologue adroitly—photos and videos are displayed on the screen behind Ross, while pianist Asher Denburg and violinist Felix Herbst accompany Ross with well-chosen musical selections and often amusing song interludes.

Ross does provide a bit of his penchant for insult comedy at the end, when he roams up and down the aisles chatting with audience members, giving them a cutting comment or two and handing them a banana for being good sports. Take a Banana for the Ride might not convert non-fans, but Ross’ observational comedy does successfully transfer to Broadway.

Off-Broadway Review: "Colin Quinn—Small Talk"

Colin Quinn—Small Talk

Written and performed by Colin Quinn; directed by James Fauvell

Performances through February 11, 2023

Lucille Lortel Theatre, 121 Christopher Street, New York, NY

colinquinnshow.com

Colin Quinn—Small Talk (photo: Monique Carboni)

For several years, sharp-witted comedian Colin Quinn—probably best-known to comedy fans for his stint as "Weekend Update" anchor on Saturday Night Live from 1998 to 2000—has been performing regularly both on and off Broadway. After his show The Last Best Hope in fall 2021 at the Lucille Lortel Theatre, the fast-talking Brooklyn comic returns there for his latest, Colin Quinn—Small Talk, in which he amusingly discusses the seemingly lost art of people introducing themselves to and engaging with others through innocuous patter. As always with Quinn, there are more misses than hits, but his sardonic approach does yield some comic insights.

Although Quinn trods a lot of ground in his 70-minute routine—which encompasses his maxim that, “between phones, air pods and self-checkout, small talk is down 87 percent”—it’s on the periphery that he finds his cleverest material. In one routine, he affirms that Human Resources is the “law enforcement arm of the office” and soon there will be no more series like Law and Order or CSI on TV; instead, “every cop show is going to be H.R.: ‘There are two separate but very important groups in every office—the sexist pigs and those who are assigned to stop them. These are their stories.’”

There’s also his offbeat spins on things we all take for granted. Discussing social media, he notes that schizophrenics suffer their whole lives with imaginary voices in their heads and now all of us have our own “voices,” all on our devices: “You carry two billion peoples’ personalities with you at all times.” His solution? “If you post more than 5 times a day you should be in a 72-hour psychiatric hold.”

He has quick fixes for our country’s various ills, including immigration (those who want to live here must pick someone already here no one likes and send them to their old country as a one-for-one trade), abortion (“the only people that should weigh in on abortion are mothers disappointed in how their adult children turned out—they’ve seen the agony and the ecstasy”) and gun control (“When people come in to buy a gun, no waiting period but first give us three references. Then we FaceTime those people and go, ‘Hey, your friend Joe Schmo wants to buy a gun,’ and if they go, ‘Really?!’ They’re not getting a gun.”)

Quinn also, somewhat halfheartedly, equates the right and the left as cultish, the wingnuts as a “combination David Koresh compound meets Jimmy Buffett concert” and liberals as the Manson family. But he doesn’t push the comparison too far and drops it after an obvious punch line about killing “the pigs.”

For all his Bushwick bravado, Quinn saves his best bit for the end, when he humorously eulogizes the great Norm MacDonald as the ultimate small talker—it’s a bit sanctimonious but also humanizing in a way that Quinn usually doesn’t allow himself. It’s also the best kind of small talk.