The Taliban Make Terrible Best Friends

There is a specific strain of travel comedy that usually devolves into a comedian doing a bad accent and concluding that people are the same everywhere. Giulio Gallarotti acknowledges this trope and then bypasses it by vacationing in active conflict zones. His new special, “On the Map,” builds an hour around the tension between domestic adulthood and extreme tourism. The operating premise is a newly engaged man who refuses to stop taking trips to the Middle East.

The material generated from Iraq and Afghanistan forms the backbone of the special. One prolonged chunk details a tea session with the Taliban. Gallarotti points out that they love unarmed white people and force their foreign visitors to hang out with them all day. He characterizes the militant group as the scariest best friends in the world. The joke works because he focuses on the sheer awkwardness of developing Stockholm syndrome while an armed faction politely compliments his personality. He then contrasts this geopolitical tension with hyper-specific observations. An older Italian man in his life, for instance, refuses to wear a seatbelt on the logic that he can simply jump out of the moving car right before an accident occurs.

Directed by Pete Davidson and filmed at the Den Theatre in Chicago, the performance relies on a completely conversational rhythm. Gallarotti rarely raises his voice. The humor comes from hearing a laid-back New York comic casually describe surviving geopolitical danger. The overarching theme is an attempt to settle down without actually staying home. The special ultimately suggests that global diplomacy is mostly just hoping the foreign soldier staring at a passport is only playing a prank.