Will Broadway’s Alex Edelman be our new straight (bi?) BFF?
A post shared by Alex Edelman’s Just For Us (@justforusshow)Sometimes we need a reminder that guys — straight, gay, and everything in between — aren’t all pigs.
Enter Alex Edelman.After performances in London, Edinburgh, Melbourne, Boston, and Washington, D.C., and an Off-Broadway run extended six times, Edelman’s one-person show, Just For Us, has finally arrived on Broadway.With quickfire delivery, Edelman recollects how following anti-Semitic Twitter accounts leads him to bravely go where few Jews have gone: a White Nationalists meeting in Queens, New York.
Dodging interrogations by its attendees, he offers a lucid and laughable account of what happens next.Wearing a grey button-up shirt, khakis, and sneakers, Edelman could be one of the thousands of adorably nebbish guys roaming around Brooklyn, SoHo, the Upper West Side, or anywhere else millennial New Yorkers hang out.But instead, he enters the eye of the storm, first establishing a Twitter feed of haters after someone attacks him online for being a Jew.
He names it “Jewish National Fund Contributors,” knowing they’ll be notified when they’re added to the list.Then, on a random Tuesday night while following the feed, he sees a Tweet, “… if you live in New York City and you’re curious about your #whiteness—” along with a Queens address.Edelman recalls the meeting’s details, from chatting with attendee Chelsea and confessing mixed feelings (“We talk for about ten minutes and she does most of the talking, which is a red flag but not a deal breaker.”) to the impact of being raised in a religious household. (“Like, if I was raised secular in a cool place like New York or Los Angeles, I think I’d consider myself bisexual.
