When comedian Jeff Ross was getting ready to take his one-person show, Jeff Ross: Take a Banana for the Ride to Broadway, he turned to friend Billy Crystal for advice (Crystal had done a one-person show on Broadway called 700 Sundays in 2004). “He said, ‘You think you're gonna want to be done with the show, but you're gonna want to keep going,’" Ross explains. "And he wound up doing his for five years.”
Technically, Ross has been doing his own one-person show Take a Banana for the Ride for over 30 years. And now he’s taken it to Broadway, where the show’s running at the Nederlander Theatre August 5–28. “First of all, I was 15, writing stuff down in a notebook that I just found that I'm using in the show. So I've been writing this show all my life,” says Ross. He initially wrote the show in the mid ‘90s, as a series of reflections about his late grandfather.
Find out how late comedians Norman MacDonald, Bob Saget, and Gilbert Gottfried inspired Ross to revisit the show and take it to Broadway, and why “green bananas have no life experience. I want a brown, bruised up, smushed banana to tell me a story. And that's kind of what the theme of the show is.”
Ross recently spoke to Playbill Vice President/Chief Operating Office Alex Birsh on the Playbill Podcast about getting ready for his Broadway debut. Take a listen below, and be sure to subscribe to the Playbill Podcast wherever you get podcasts.
This interview took place at the RT60 Rooftop Bar & Lounge in Hard Rock Hotel in New York City (159 W 48th St).
“The two most common questions anyone at Playbill gets from friends or family are: 'What's on Broadway? And what should I see?,'" says Birsh of the inspiration behind the new project. "The Playbill Podcast is here to help. Whether you’re a Broadway veteran or just starting to explore, we'll bring you the magic of Broadway, one show at a time.”
Along with Birsh and stars from each spotlighted show, episodes feature conversations with Playbill's resident theatre experts, aka the staffers that spend all their days writing and working on theatre and most nights seeing shows. The Playbill Podcast connects listeners with the savvy and fun theatre fans you've been looking for, whether it's to help you find your next ticket to buy or just give you a place to geek out about your favorite show.
