The new revue “Old Jews Telling Jokes” is inspired by the Web site of the same name — which consists of a parade of elderly cut-ups delivering jokes.
But unlike the Web, which you can leave after a ba-dum-bump or three, an off-Broadway show holds you hostage. And no matter how funny the material is here, 90 minutes worth of doctor visits and “oy, my wife!” is exhausting.
The only unexpected thing about “Old Jews Telling Jokes” is that two of the five actors, Bill Army and Audrey Lynn Weston, are on the youthful side — they’re creaky only when compared to Justin Bieber and Willow Smith. Other than that, co-creators Peter Gethers (a big-time book publisher) and Daniel Okrent (former public editor of the Times) stick to what the title describes.
The pair are credited for inventing Rotisserie League Baseball in 1980, and their new project is unlikely to top that achievement. Sure, there are several chuckles and a few big laughs. But then, they’re throwing so much at the wall that some of it is bound to stick, especially in the expert hands of Marilyn Sokol, Todd Susman and Lenny Wolpe — the, ahem, experienced cast members.
Although there’s only one “walk into a bar” joke, the show amply covers the usual territory: sex (mostly bad), marriage (even worse), bodily functions (embarrassing), gentiles (don’t trust appearances) and an astonishing number of desert-island jokes. There’s a good amount of raunch, too, because few things are funnier than hearing your bubbe say “f – – k.”
And that’s it. There’s no set to speak of, only a TV screen flashing cheap graphics — a coconut tree for the island gags, for instance — as well as the one flourish: a video of Alan King’s “Survived by his Wife” routine, about men dying earlier than women.
Why not more of that stuff?
Okrent reportedly praised director Marc Bruni for making him and Gethers cut the editorializing about Jewish humor and what makes a joke land or not.
That may not have been such a good idea. Now the closest we get to a respite are short, often sentimental monologues. As a character named Morty, Wolpe remarks that “the Yiddish of even 40 years ago has largely disappeared from our society, except in wisecracks and insults and jokes. It’s these jokes that have made my connection to the past a lot easier.”
Nice touch, but you wish for more context, especially since New York City and the Catskills are ground zero for American Jewish humor.
But hey, that just leaves more room to fully exploit the epic joke revolving around the Drobkin fart.