Award-winning Jewish actress, comedian, and writer Rachel Bloom, star and co-creator of the CW hit “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,” will bring a one-woman musical comedy to an off-Broadway theater this fall for a four-week run.
“Death, Let Me Do My Show,” written by and starring Bloom, will begin previews at the Lucille Lortel Theatre (121 Christopher St.) on Sept. 6, with opening night on Sept. 14.
“I don’t want to say TOO much about it but, in summation, it’s a show that is definitely NOT about the ever-present specter of death,” Bloom wrote in an email to her fan club on Tuesday. “It’s filled with raunchy and escapist material that will in NO way explore the pandemic and all the tumultuous events that ensued in my personal life.”
The email, with the subject line “Baby’s First Off-Broadway Show!!,” also features a photo of Bloom, 35, wearing a T-shirt from legendary Upper West Side Jewish grocery Zabar’s.
Bloom is best known for “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,” a musical TV series about a successful but miserable New York lawyer, Rebecca Bunch, who decides to follow her camp ex-boyfriend to suburban West Covina, California.
The series, which ran for four seasons between 2015-2019, “is hilarious, zany and addresses Jewish identity in myriad ways,” a JTA article declared in 2016. Bloom won a Golden Globe for her performance in the starring role, as well as an Emmy for Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics.
Bloom's Jewish identity
A Los Angeles native, Bloom, who studied drama at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, once told JTA that she always felt a kinship with New York Jews. “I’d always felt like a neurotic Jewish person growing up in California, and New York really brought out in a great way those parts of me,” she said in the 2016 interview.
Bloom, who says she was raised “pretty secular,” went to Hebrew school until around age 9. “We didn’t have Passover seders, but I know every single celebrity who’s ever said anything antisemitic,” she told JTA.
Bloom co-wrote a 2013 Hanukkah comedy album, “Suck It, Christmas,” and her 2020 memoir, “I Want to Be Where the Normal People Are,” is packed with Jewish jokes. “Jews talk about being Jewish a lot,” she said. “They’re very aware of their Jewish identity.”
“Death, Let Me Do My Show” is directed by Seth Barrish (“Mike Birbiglia: The Old Man & the Pool”) and originally played to sold-out crowds in London, Chicago, Boston, and elsewhere.