Chutzpah, the Musical: Jackie Mason Yuks Up 'Much Ado About Everything'

JACKIE MASON: MUCH ADO ABOUT EVERYTHING

Wilbur Theater

October 19 - November 3

"Gentiles are allowed in the building?" asks Jackie Mason as he scans the audience to start his new one-man show, Much Ado About Everything. Indeed, it's a wonder that they are let in the building--Mason realizes his audience is virtually 100 percent Jewish and tailors his comedy appropriately. Sure, he occasionally delivers the universally appealing punch line, but even those seem unintentional--Mason knows his audience and boldly refuses to make his comedy broadly palatable. A gutsy approach but one that pays off in spades.

Mason has, of course, had a long and illustrious career. In addition to performing for Queen Elizabeth II, being honored by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and receiving an honorary degree from Oxford University, he has taken his one-man show to Broadway five different times. He has received all the awards a comedian could possibly dream of--Tonys, Grammys, Emmys, etc.

Obviously, Jackie Mason has nothing to prove anymore. Recently, he's been letting his mouth motor along completely unrestrained: "Clinton would just as easily kill as Hitler would. He has no conscience," he said in a recent interview without explaining himself. As a result, the press has labelled him an "equal opportunity offender," a title he doesn't seem to mind. In Much Ado About Everything, he doesn't give a hoot about political correctness or being temporarily offensive, as long as it produces the all-important laugh.

"Why doesn't an Italian woman cheat on her husband?" he asks, confounding his predominantly female Jewish audience. "Because if she did, WHAM!" he adds with a gesture to match. "But a Jewish wife," he continues, "has nothing to lose. She cheats on her husband and what happens--he runs and call his mother." The audience, of course, roars its approval and the consensus of nodding heads makes it clear that no one is taking offense. He proceeds along similar lines for most of the show: "There are no Jewish athletes. All we had was Mark Spitz. He took one swim, got nauseous and quit." Sometimes he probes deeper, managing to combine laughter and the uncomfortable (arguing, for instance, that Jews find solace in the medical field because they can't be persecuted). Generally, however, Jackie's comedy depends on praising or humiliating the Jew--in comparison, of course, to other races.

But here is where Jackie runs into trouble. If he was to be a truly uninhibited comedian, he wouldn't even bother qualifying his statements. Like a Howard Stern or a Rush Limbaugh, he would just rant and rave, regardless of the consequences. Jackie, however, tries to find a balance that seemingly doesn't exist, between speaking freely and still trying to qualify dangerous statements (like his brazenly racist quips). For instance, he offers us the previous comment on Jewish wives and their timid husbands and elicits audience hysteria; the mood, however, turns somber when he immediately adds "But adultery is nothing to laugh over. Adulterers are no subject for comedy." Why ruin the mood? Why make the audience nervous to laugh?

Normally, he pokes fun at all types of people without restraint: "Why do homosexuals always have to have a parade? Put a few homosexuals together and you have a parade. And then they start taking over other people's parades. Like the Jewish Butcher Parade--they'll just jump right in." Jokes about Irish, blacks and Hispanics flow without the slightest of inhibitions. But then, he'll stop every so often to let us know that "Racists are the scum of the earth" and that making fun of others is morally wrong. But why even bother? Instead of finding the truth at the heart of an issue and presenting it in a way that inspires laughter (and possibly understanding), he occasionally gets stuck trying to be defensive. Whenever he tries to qualify his jokes, the show momentarily screeches to a halt.

Jackie is thus at his best when he lets loose. Many of his jokes find the perfect balance between quirkiness and truth: "Jews have their professions marked out for them. But so do Gentiles. Gentiles are great in certain fields--like coal-mining. Ever seen a Jew coal-miner? With a little light on his yarmulke?" He also manages to take stale issues and still make them mildly amusing. The O.J. Simpson trial for instance, "proved that the innocent until proven guilty rule no longer applies. Now, you're innocent until proven guilty and even after you're proven guilty, you're still innocent." And as for President Clinton, he simply makes references to the "sex maniacs in Martha's Vineyard" and gets the obligatory laugh. Many of the jokes seem old, and it's entirely possible that Much Ado About Everything is a recycled mishmash of Mason's past shows. But he's still an engaging comedian (despite his limited focus and his tendency to speak at a whirlwind pace).

Yet, for Mason to be at full force, he must stop trying to walk the tightrope of "moral correctness." He can't always tell the honest truth and still be politically correct. Plus, defensive qualifications compromise his humor and make the audience feel self-conscious. Who wants to hear a comedian apologize for being funny?