Rachel Bloom in her musical comedy show at the Orpheum Theatre, Death, Let Me Do My Show.
A specter is haunting Rachel Bloom—the specter of death. In fact, Death is sitting in the fifth row of her show, Death, Let Me Do My Show, looking suspiciously like Bloom’s friend David Hull, the “moderately successful actor who seems stuck between leading man and character roles” (as she describes him). And Death insists on being acknowledged, contrary to Bloom’s plan to deliver the show as she conceived it in 2019.
Bloom singing “Darling, Meet Me Under the Cum Tree.” Photographs by Emilio Madrid.
Bloom touches on COVID in her opening: she became a mother in March 2020, and she hilariously laments the future trite college essays of the pandemic generation: “My first memory is saying, ‘Mommy? What’s Cowona?’ And when she told me I knew nothing would ever be the same.” The plan for the evening, however, is to push COVID (and death) aside and party like it’s 2019. Bloom then launches into her first number, “Darling, Meet Me Under the Cum Tree,” singing the cleverly bawdy lyrics with a refined, aristocratic intonation (Bloom has a cowriter for each of the six songs; for this one it is Jerome Kurtenbach, also the music director).
But, like a nagging voice that has manifested itself from her unconscious mind, Death interrupts and demands recognition. The set (designed by Beowulf Boritt) collapses, and the curtain falls. Bloom’s glittering pantsuit (costume design by Kristin Isola) suddenly seems incongruous. It’s time to talk about mortality. From here onward, the show consists of Bloom delivering monologues and singing about death-adjacent subjects in ways that are heartfelt, absurd, and funny, all the while hoping to turn back to the “original” show, only to be continually pressed by Death to address the dark days of 2020. Seth Barrish, who has helped guide Mike Birbiglia through several comic but also moving and confessional one-person shows, directs.
“Bloom never pivots out of the comic vein even with heavy subject matter.”
Bloom begins with her beloved dog, who is still alive but whose death she’s forced to imagine thanks to a pet-insurance mix-up. Her song about the “rainbow bridge”—the afterlife limbo where pets await their owners—is a great example of the kind of humor that drives the songs: by treating the rainbow bridge literally, Bloom captures what is strange and counterintuitive about the maudlin cliché, seeking out awkward moments the scenario would generate. The effect of this song is aided by Hana S. Kim’s projections of cheesy visual renderings of the bridge.
Death keeps pushing and Bloom keeps responding, veering into personal territory, most importantly the period her infant daughter spent in the NICU, during which she received news that her friend and artistic collaborator Adam Schlesinger had COVID and was in a New York City hospital on a ventilator, eventually succumbing to the disease. Bloom never pivots out of the comic vein even with the heavy subject matter—there is always a zany aside at hand, such as how the NICU looks like a spa for babies.
Bloom cowrote six songs for the show, which include duets she sings with Death, who forces her to acknowledge personal tragedies of 2020.
The songs are interspersed among the morbid revelations, including “The Spookiest Scariest Ghost” (written with Alden Derck), which plays on the idea that despite being the subject of terror, the presence of ghosts would actually be comforting by confirming the existence of something beyond death:
Boo I’m a bloody bride who’s holding a knife!
But I’m also proof of an afterlife!
Is a Civil War soldier whose face has been destroyed
Really as scary as an unfeeling void?
“My Daughter’s Dog” (written with Shaina Taub) is a duet with Death that takes an observation from earlier in the show that, despite the deep love for one’s pet, you hope that you outlive them, and acknowledges that with a child the situation is the reverse: you are the faithful, loving companion who will hopefully die first, and thus, “I am my daughter’s dog.” Death himself gets his own pop-angsty number, “I Feel Just Like Dear Evan Hansen” (written with Eli Bolin and Jack Dolgen): “When I was a kid / They laughed at my scythe and my cloak. / And now that I’m grown / I’m still just as much of a joke.”
The songs are wonderfully absurd yet incisive riffs on the ways people grapple with anxiety about death. The show is a comic triumph but stops short of profundity or catharsis, as Bloom seems reluctant to really confront the melancholy inherent in the material. It is fitting, then, when Death and Bloom reprise “Darling, Meet Me Under the Cum Tree” for the finale, with a projection of the rainbow bridge that includes Death hugging Bloom. Bloom offers a peak at the darkness that lurks behind the silliness but is sure to keep it at bay and to foreground laughter.
Death, Let Me Do My Show runs at the Orpheum Theatre (126 2nd Ave.) through Jan. 6. Performances are at 7 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, at 5:30 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. Saturday, and at 5:30 p.m. Sunday. For tickets, visit rachelbloomshow.com.
Writer: Rachel Bloom
Director: Seth Barrish
Set: Beowulf Boritt
Costumes: Kristin Isola
Lighting: Aaron Copp
Sound Design: Beth Lake & Alex Neumann
Projection Design: Hana S. Kim
Music Director & Orchestrations: Jerome Kurtenbach
