The Planet Is Burning

Ilana Glazer is a physical, highly animated performer, and she spends much of her debut solo special trying to draw a line between herself and the weed-smoke caricature she played for five seasons on Broad City. The difference, she notes early on, is that while her television counterpart woke up and immediately baked, the real Glazer takes her vitamins first, then gets high, and has her husband do the buying. Filmed at the White Oak Music Hall in Houston, Texas, the set captures Glazer at a major career crossroads in 2019, freshly transitioned out of her signature television series and into the more exposed realm of solo theater work.

Her hour touches on a scattershot of topics, from the structural design of women’s shaving razors to the history of Hugo Boss tailoring Nazi uniforms. She spends a notable stretch of time walking the audience through the mechanics of a menstrual cup, leaning heavily on the expressive facial movements and vocal fry that her fans recognize.

While her physical enthusiasm and charm are intact, the special received a mixed reception. Critics noted that she often relies on the broad, familiar rhythms of her television persona to carry weaker material, resulting in a performance that occasionally feels more like a celebratory live podcast than a tightly crafted hour of stand-up. Still, for those who appreciate her specific Brooklyn-adjacent energy, the performance offers a personal, loose reflection on adulthood at the end of the 2010s.