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Brick Wall Comedy
Brick Wall Comedy

Gay Jokes for Straight Cruisers

Jim David

Stand Up! Records · Album · 2021 · 44 min

A veteran gay comedian roasts straight tourists on a cruise ship.

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Jim David has made a career of bringing his Southern-born perspective to audiences who might not always know what to make of him. On Gay Jokes for Straight Cruisers, he performs in a captive environment: a trans-Atlantic cruise ship. Working a room of middle-aged tourists, David leans directly into the friction, turning the ship’s vacation energy into roasts of his own audience, vacation complaints, and the culture of cruise lines.

The album was captured live in March 2020 aboard a ship heading to Spain, just as the COVID-19 pandemic began shutting down global travel. After returning home to New York and finding himself suddenly out of work due to the lockdown, David rediscovered the recording and edited it into his fifth comedy album. Released by Stand Up! Records in April 2021, the release went to number one on the iTunes comedy chart.

David targets the trashiness of mega-ships, which he describes as Walmart on the water, as well as passenger complaints and the political dread of the era. The performance highlights his decades of club experience. He displays a crowd-work capability that handles even conservative cruise-goers with the ease of a veteran headliner, especially during segments where he plays off the audience’s discomfort with his gay material.

The set list

5 bits

  1. Comedy in a Pandemic / 'We Are All on the Same Boat'

    Opens the performance joking about being literally on the same boat taking a luxury cruise during the looming outbreak of the pandemic

  2. Cruise ship passenger complaints

    Riffs on actual ridiculous written complaints submitted by passengers to cruise management, such as complaining that 'the weather was nicer on Princess'

  3. Cruise ship life and crew

    Details daily life aboard the ship, including passengers on motorized scooters, staff sex lives, and who works the worst job on board

  4. Topical and political material

    Mocks Donald Trump, Meghan Markle and Prince Harry, the British royal family, and gently confronts an audience member wearing an American flag shirt

  5. Where are you from crowd inquiries

    Engages audience members about their hometowns, replying primarily by mentioning having performed shows in those locations

How it plays

Tone
Irreverent, playful, topical, and biting
On stage
Whip-smart, cynical, and irrepressible with sharp wit, self-described as bringing drag queen chutzpah and fearless irreverence to the stage
About
Cruise ship life, COVID-19 pandemic, Customer complaints, Gay culture and straight cruise audiences, Politics and Donald Trump, British royalty

What the critics said

Praised by critics as an absolute blast, an early-COVID time capsule, and a masterclass in audience interaction that turns cruise ship comedy tropes upside down

In the room: Raucous, shouting out and interrupting freely, screaming with laughter, and leaning eagerly into the comedian's crowdwork

Summed up from reviews, articles and listings. Sources: music.apple.com, theseriouscomedysite.com, podcast.dennisanyone.net, en.wikipedia.org, broadwayworld.com, standuprecords.com.

Backstory

Recorded in March 2020 on a trans-Atlantic cruise ship to Spain with approximately 4,100 passengers right before international COVID-19 pandemic travel bans and global lockdowns took effect

Details

Released
Taped
2020, Cruise ship
Runtime
44 min
Where
Stand Up! Records (album)
Honors
Hit #1 on the iTunes comedy chart5 out of 5 Rainbows rating from BroadwayWorld
Topics
Before
Hard to Swallow (2015)

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