Jeff Ross: Take a Banana for the Ride
Opening Night: August 18, 2025
Theater: Nederlander Theatre
Website: jeffrossbroadway.com
Legendary comic Jeff Ross returns home for his long-awaited Broadway debut in TAKE A BANANA FOR THE RIDE — a hilarious, heartfelt one-man show about laughing through the pain, the importance of having thick skin, and the vengeful pleasures of a Jewish comic owning a German dog. This 90-minute performance is the result of a 30-year journey in comedy: a cathartic mix of dangerous jokes, touching family stories, and songs that stay with you long after the curtain falls. No two shows are exactly alike, but each reveals the Roastmaster General at his most unguarded — raw, reflective, and ridiculously funny. It’ll be your most emotional night at the theater since Mufasa died in The Lion King! (Oh no, did we ruin it?)
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August 18, 2025
“Take a Banana” is, however, a willfully upbeat show; whenever it gets too dark, Ross detonates another joke. In his banana-yellow suit (by Toni-Leslie James), he takes us on a tour of his family and childhood, with the help of old photos and home videos projected inside the many large, ornate frames on Beowulf Boritt’s handsome, curve-walled set.
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August 18, 2025
This deeply personal, moving, and undeniably funny show is first and foremost a love letter to the chaotic people (and pets) that made Ross who he is. The experience of losing them is what he roasts—and there’s really no punching any higher than that.
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August 18, 2025
Here, though, laughs are not the final goal. Vicious comedy may be Ross’s superpower, but this show aims to reveal his secret identity as the nicest of guys: an über-mensch.
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August 18, 2025
Death does not become him. Frankly, it’s a bore, as is his fixation on his own health, which went bad from the get-go.
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It doesn’t take long before the evening begins to feel like an interminable evening with an elderly relative who insists on making you look through their photo albums. Ross can be a very funny comic, and he throws in plenty of amusing one-liners into the mix. But they’re not enough to compensate for the tiresome sections in which he reads letters from his parents or kvells over photos of his two German Shepherd dogs like a proud father (he’s never been married or had children).
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August 18, 2025
For all of its appeal, the 90-minute attraction somehow seems a smidge overlong; perhaps Ross’ dog stories might be curtailed. Fans familiar with Ross’ skill at insult humor likely will prefer more audience interaction than he offers at present. A few expletives aside, the sincere, even sentimental at times Take a Banana for the Ride proves much more of a family meal than a mere roast.
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Here and throughout, Mr. Ross is, for the most part, careful to balance his gushing with the gleefully impolite humor that is his bread and butter.
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But he threads, or at least punctuates, each of these downer stories with one-liners, some of them funny, some of them just in bad taste. (About his baldness, he says: “I know I look like Bruce Willis if his trainer also had dementia.”) And he pairs stories of suffering with stories of resilience; he follows up the story of the death of his dog with (spoiler alert) a cameo by his other dog.
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Thus, it is pleasantly surprising that Ross’s new solo show Jeff Ross: Take a Banana for the Ride is very silly, disarmingly sweet, and engagingly straightforward. To have built a reputation on potty humor that also wields the toilet seat like a baseball bat is impressively revealing in terms of what made the comic who he is.
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[The show is] actually is far more complex and better written than I think many will anticipate. Ross gets away with such a surfeit of sentiment precisely because of his naturally caustic inclinations; the jokes are sharp enough and the laughs are hard and plentiful enough that all of the schmaltz feels not just charming but well-earned.
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