Known as “The Roastmaster General” for his 30 years of no-holds-barred celebrity roasts on TV’s Comedy Central and Netflix, Emmy-nominated insult comedian Jeff Ross, a native of Newark, NJ, has now made his Broadway debut at the Nederlander Theater with a limited engagement of his one-man autobiographical show Jeff Ross: Take a Banana for the Ride, which he wrote and performs, and named after the practical travel advice he got from his grandfather when he was taking the bus into Port Authority for his early stand-up routines in NYC. Combining emotional memories of his family, career, and health issues (suffering from alopecia and fighting colon cancer) with funny songs, disparaging jokes, and the roasting of volunteers in the audience, the production, directed by Stephen Kessler, is intended to be a cathartic experience that will shake people out of the hard times they’re going through, bring them together, and make them laugh. It works.
For the entirety of the performance, Ross, directly addressing the audience and moving naturally around the stage, wears a bright yellow suit (costume by Toni-Leslie James), matching the color of the bunch of bananas on a central vintage side table next to a blue chaise longue (both from his family’s Clinton Manor Catering business), placed before a curving back wall filled with multiple projection screens in elaborate gold frames (set by Beowulf Boritt), with actively changing photos and videos (projections by Stefania Bulbarella) that show him and the significant people (and dogs!) from his life and relay the moods of his intimate memories. Those include the darkness of losing his parents at an early age (he was 14 when his mother died of cancer, and 19 when he lost his father to drugs), to whom he attributes his inherent sense of humor, and his career catching fire after one life-changing roast he did. He is accompanied on piano by music director and composer Asher Denburg, who provided the orchestrations and arrangements for Ross’s original comical songs, and Felix Herbst on violin, seated on stage, audience left, setting the tone for his personal anecdotes and interacting with him at points in the show.
His soul-baring openness and ability to laugh at even the most difficult experiences – in addition to the premature deaths of his parents (whose loving letters he found and reads aloud), he also lost three of his closest friends in comedy (Norm Macdonald, Gilbert Gottfried, and Bob Saget) within eight months of each other, and his beloved elderly grandfather who raised him and for whom he later became caretaker – make him absolutely irresistible and relatable as a deeply caring human being, not just an insult comic. And that compassion extends to the dogs he rescued during the pandemic, Nana and Nipsey, who became his dearest, devoted, heart-stealing companions, despite the fact that he’s Jewish and they’re German Shepherds (he laughingly enacts their imagined thoughts with a German accent and Nazi salute).
The theme of being a Jew is a recurrent one, from revealing that his real name is Jeffrey Ross Lifschultz, to being bullied as a young kid at school (to which he responded with his earliest comical put-down and becoming, at the age of ten-and-a-half, the second-youngest-ever blackbelt in karate in order to defend himself), witty observations about Christmas, and singing his warning anthem “DFWTJ” (to avoid any spoilers, you’ll have to go and hear for yourself what that stands for – it’s a good one).
Ross closes his thoroughly engaging, entertaining, and enlightening show with a segment of audience interaction, asking those who are presently having a difficult time to stand, walking up and down the aisles of the house followed by a live-feed video camera (operated by Dara Woo and projected on the large upstage screens), ad-libbing mischievous insults of them face-to-face (clear sound by Daniel Lundberg), tossing each of them a banana, and reminding everyone of the joy he finds in what he does, the fundamental important of his relationships with family, friends, and fans, and the salvation found in making what’s bad more bearable by remembering the good and laughing. Of course, in keeping with the title of the show, he does that with a smart and amusing banana metaphor.
At once cutting and likable, profoundly sensitive without being maudlin, and overflowing with comic genius, human tenderness, and universal understanding, Jeff Ross: Take a Banana for the Ride is an uplifting hour-and-a-half that will leave you smiling and keep you feeling. When you go, don’t forget to listen to his grandfather and . . . well, you know.
Running Time: Approximately 90 minutes, without intermission.
Jeff Ross: Take a Banana for the Ride plays through Sunday, September 28, 2025, at the Nederlander Theater, 208 W 41st Street, NYC. For tickets (priced at $69-209, including fees), go online, or find discount tickets at TodayTix.
