Bar Mitzvah
Well, Christmas is on its way and for Jewish people around the world, that means Hanukah. I’m not acquainted with many Jewish traditions but I did once find myself being the stand-up comedian at a Bar Mitzvah. How did it go, I hear you ask? Are you familiar with the phrase ‘I felt like a pork chop in a synagogue’? If so, you’re just not even close to the humiliated ballpark I’m referring to.
I suppose I should rewind to the beginning. My flatmate Celia was a stand-up comedian on Rove. She was great. She also caught the attention of a personal assistant who was organising the entertainment for her boss’s son’s Bar Mitzvah. Unfortunately, Celia was unavailable for the gig, so guess who got sloppy seconds? This guy. Yep, if you’re looking for a last-minute, inappropriate fill-in for someone who is televisually successful, you’d be hard-pressed to find a more eager, but not necessarily suitable, substitute than myself. I had my hand up before they could even consider alternatives. Fifteen-minute spot, good money. Why not?
Now, not so long before, I had been told that I looked Jewish, so I was understandably upset when they cancelled two days later. I was more upset than if a gentile gig of mine were canned. After all, it’s not every day I get to entertain ‘my people’.
Then, as I hopped into bed the night before the gig was supposed to happen, my phone rang. I answered, expecting the obligatory Saturday-night wrong-number drink-and-dial:
‘Macca, ya dick ’ed, are youse out wiv Trina?’
‘This isn’t Macca. I think it’s likely you have the wrong number. I bid you good morrow, sir. Sorry.’
‘Don’t be sorry, baby, you sound hot. I can come pick you up and youse can have a wicked night wiv us.’
Cue: hang-up, dial tone.
However, that wasn’t the phone call I received. It was Daddy Mitzvah, wondering if I would reconsider, as they had had another last-minute change of heart. He sounded a little desperate, almost as desperate as me, so how could I say no? Hey, I’m easygoing. I roll with the punches. I go with the flow.
‘Sorry, did you just say you now want me to do a forty-minute set?’
Forty minutes is a long time to watch a surgeon perform a lifesaving heart procedure on a loved one, but it’s worth it. I don’t come with the same guarantee. With my incredible bartering skills, though, I managed to whittle him down to a cool ... half hour. However, then came the questionnaire. First cab off the rank:
‘So, are you funny?’ [An oldie but a goodie.]
‘Well ... um ... yes ... no, yes? This is how I make my living, if that’s what you mean?’
‘What material do you do?’
‘Um, I focus a lot sort of on my family and how I was brought up and ...’
‘So, you’ll do lots of audience participation, then?’ [I think I was missing some dots here.]
‘I can try...’
‘What do you wear?’ [I thought, I am not answering that question. This is me. I’m not catering my outfit to his wishes so that he has more control over the night’s performance. I am not telling him what I wear.]
‘I wear dresses. I always dress nicely.’ [What I think and do often contradict each other.]
‘So, is it a costume?’
At this point, I’m tired. I’m confused. I’m fairly certain he thought I was honking down on some Saturday night wacky tobaccy, but managed to get him off the phone with his heart somewhat at rest.
I knew at this point that the whole thing was turning into a story. But, boy, was it far from over. I turned up to the venue half an hour early, just so everyone could relax and know that the saviour of comedy and Bar Mitzvahs had arrived. I wanted to give everyone enough time to slip into their back-up pair of undies for when the laughs really started rolling. Then I entered the celebration room and saw the clientele.
Five tables of eight. Ten octogenarians, five of whom were clearly non-English speakers, coupled with some noncommittal, but obligated, work colleagues, five thirteen year olds and a whole lot of Couldn’t Give a Shit.
Cue music: ‘She Works Hard For the Money’.
I went to the bathroom and, for the first time in a long time, prayed. I made the toilet seat sweaty before I sat down. How did I get into this? How could he think that after a full three-day celebration, which is what a Bar Mitzvah is, what these people needed was some good old-fashioned ironic character-based sarcasm at 9.30 pm on a Sunday night?
As I took to the stage, the mood became very apparent: I was not the after dinner mint this crowd was looking for. Initially, there was a lot of polite smiling and nodding. Which led into some polite chatter amongst themselves. Which led into some deeply engaging conversation that, again, I was not involved in. This wasn’t my audience. This was Vince Sorrenti’s audience.
But I want to give you an exact picture of how the dad thought it was going: at the twenty-minute mark, he actually gave me the wind-up with his hand. Enough so that the rest of the family knew that he was in control, and that I was just some dickhead he’d mistakenly hired instead of someone funny.
It wasn’t all bad, though; I should narrow it down to what they hated the most. Was it my completely incongruous Ruth Cracknell impression in which I called Garry McDonald, inducing a necromantic nervous breakdown? Or could it have been those insightful observations about the honey badger that ate the puff adder because he was hungry? I don’t know. The audience was fairly repulsed by my attempts to bypass a train guard by pretending to have cerebral palsy. Ah, it’s all such a heady blur of self-hatred and family shame that I can’t pick out the carrot from the celery in the projectile vomit that was my performance.
The night was summed up perfectly by the proud Jewish father. Afterwards, he dutifully walked over to me and, with a sheen of embarrassed beaded sweat forming all over his balding head, looked me straight in the eye and said it:
‘Tough crowd.’
Yes, it was, George. It was a tough crowd. And so, I say to any budding comics looking to break into the Bar Mitzvah corporate scene, you are a braver soul than I. Mazel tov!
Felicity Ward is a Melbourne-based writer and comedian, who appeared on ‘The Ronnie Johns Half Hour’ and in the most recent series of ‘Thank God You're Here’.
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