How Rachel Bloom Turned a Standup Show Into a Death-Defying Solo Musical
variety.comGordon Cox Theater Editor Rachel Bloom remembers the exact moment that she decided her latest stage project, “Death, Let Me Do My Show,” couldn’t be the lightweight standup show she was hoping it would be.
It was when she stood in front of a white board looking at an outline of the jokes she intended to tell, reading phrases like “pregnancy tests” and “my butthole is like the hurricane.” Listen to this week’s “Stagecraft” podcast below: “There’s nothing dumber than seeing standup bits or comedy songs bullet-pointed out,” Bloom says on the latest episode of “Stagecraft,” Variety’s theater podcast. “It’s just these things out of context that only you understand.
I looked at it and thought: This is so stupid. I don’t think there’s room for this in the world anymore.” So “Death, Let Me Do My Show” became a genre-bending hybrid with elements of a one-act musical.
The show itself reflects that transformation, which was prodded by two real-life events that coincided in the early weeks of the COVID-19 lockdown: the birth of Bloom’s child and the death of her close friend and collaborator, musician Adam Schlesinger.
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