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| Show | Did He Like It?* |
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Humorist Jackie Mason's farewell NY engagement! |
He’s Telling You This for the Last Time
*By JASON ZINOMAN
Published: March 22, 2008
In what he is calling his farewell show, Jackie Mason has finally settled on the perfect — or poifect, as he would say — title. The posters for his previous seven solo productions, all of which were on Broadway, hang above him onstage, revealing some duds (“Jackie Mason: Brand New”? Please.) and some good tries (“Prune Danish”).
But “Jackie Mason: The Ultimate Jew,” which runs Off Broadway at New World Stages, has the ring of truth to it. Hailing from a long line of rabbis, the cantankerous Mr. Mason has pursued the Jewish joke with a tenacity and single-mindedness that exceed those of anyone else in show business. Woody Allen and Mel Brooks are polo-playing gentiles compared with Mr. Mason.
Like many Jewish teenagers, I learned what a Jewish person was — or at least the crude stereotype — from hearing Jackie Mason tapes, which my father would conspiratorially listen to when my mother left the house. Jews, I discovered, prefer coffee to cocktails and like to complain about the temperature in the room. The girls, he emphasized, aren’t interested in oral sex, though “in an oral surgeon, maybe.” You can see why my mother disapproved.
Mr. Mason, who has been doing stand-up for around half a century, has a pearlike shape that doesn’t provide for much mobility. But he still looks spry and runs through his deathless borscht belt material with gusto, landing punch lines with epileptic gesticulations.
He begins his new show, which runs more than two hours, with hokey insult humor (eyeing the first row: “You look great — compared to him”), but his material gets better with a bruising series of political jokes about Eliot Spitzer’s sex scandal. “What do you get for $5,000 that you can’t get for $4,000?” he asks with mock earnestness.
Even when he’s talking politics, a Jewish joke is never far behind. Barack Obama? He “looks like a Jew with a tan.” Bill Clinton? “Jews love him so much that if he shot a girl right here, Jews would say, ‘Who lives forever?’ ”
Mr. Mason’s patter isn’t all quick one-liners. Some of his funniest work involves longer comic set pieces that illustrate, for instance, a politician’s changing positions. Here he really reveals a sense of timing learned from decades of stand-up.
The show drags when Mr. Mason turns to another favorite subject: the Jewish status obsession. In a past show he has mocked nouveau riche Jews who buy boats. This time: “No one Jewish enjoys skiing,” he says, marking the joke with a wave of one arm.
Some of the racial jokes, many of which have passed their expiration date, might have offended decades ago. But now they just seem ridiculous — like material from that proverbial uncle Barack Obama has talked about. Mr. Mason claims that all Chinese people look the same, and he makes fun of hip-hop music by doing a mock rap. The less said about that the better. Why, he wonders, do rappers always resort to violence? Then he pauses as his arms prepare to swing: “Do you think Tony Bennett ever tried to kill Bing Crosby?”
“Jackie Mason: The Ultimate Jew” continues through June 29 at New World Stages, 340 West 50th Street, Clinton; (212) 239-6200.
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