Dan Dion/NPR
At The Outer Space music club, everyone had come to hear writer, comedianne, and radio show host Ophira Eisenberg’s comedy.
For her part, Eisenberg was perhaps hoping to have people correctly pronounce her name.
“My name is Ophira Eisenberg, or as I was introduced recently at a party, as Oprah … something Jewish,” she said.
And then there was the hapless fellow she met in a bar, whose inability to understand her name ended, as most bar misunderstandings do, in Nazis: “ ‘Your name is the Fuhrer!?’ Yes. Yes. The Fuhrer Eisenberg.”
IMost of the audience was familiar with Eisenberg from NPR’s Ask Me Another, a show that combines trivia, banter, and celebrity guests, all set to live music.
“You all look exactly like a mini Brooklyn,” Ophira Eisenberg exclaimed from the stage on a laugh, mid-set. “I could easily be in Brooklyn, looking at this crowd.”
A swell of laughter and applause rippled through the gathered.
“That’s a compliment!” a voice in the audience shot back.
Before the show, a trim blonde with bangs and dreadlocks flitted to the bar and back to her bearded companion. Huddled in jackets long after coming inside thanks to the biting cold, there was a definite sense of anticipation and camaraderie among the crowd. NPR tote bags were in abundance. Women in heels and smart overcoats trailed in, surveying the space. The beer-and-wine-only bar did a brisk trade, and stragglers grabbed folding chairs propped against the walls and created their own seating. No one was standing on ceremony. Eisenberg laughed and chatted and mingled with the crowd, the staff, and the two opening acts.
Andrew Morgan, from the New Haven area, opened the show with an everyman, aw-shucks-I-can’t‑believe‑I’m‑up-here-either feel. He was followed by Dan Rice, also a local, who combined an almost deadpan delivery with a minor talent in Mitch Hedberg-ian misdirection.
“They say you’re not supposed to slap a woman,” he remarked. “But what if she’s on fire?”
Eisenberg immediately connected with the crowd. Sharing with the audience her academic background — “a cultural anthropology degree with a minor in critical theory — I know, the world was my oyster!” — led to the revelation of several Yale graduates and employees in the audience.
Her material was warm and wry, with stated impatience for the type of foibles she regularly sees living in modern-day Brooklyn. Moving from Calgary to Brooklyn — a “lateral move,” in her words — has given her insight not only into how others perceive her neighborhood, but how she herself does.
“My sister was like, ‘Is it dangerous? Are there crackheads in your neighborhood?’ If anyone’s doing crack in my neighborhood, they’re doing organic, free-range crack, low-carb omega‑3 crack, the kind of crack they do to help their yoga. Locally sourced, of course.”
Eisenberg gamely took on the modern tendency to ironically reverse the mundane. She related a story of children crying in artisanal ice cream stores because there are only flavors like “leather” and “Tobacco.” “I’m sorry honey, there’s no chocolate,” Eisenberg related. “But they have Johnny Walker Double Black…?” which brought out raucous laughter.
She gave a shout-out to NPR, prompting warm applause from the audience. She then made quick guesswork of the socioeconomics of the room and associated self-consciousness therein.
“I love your fur,” she said to one audience member.
“At least it’s warm,” the woman returned.
Her exasperated humor over a barista asking how she wants her coffee to make her feel was especially on point. “I don’t know,” she exclaimed on stage, bending with disbelief, “I want it to give me a boost! And make me take a shit!”
From there, her punchlines segued into painfully comedic storytelling about her own dating foibles and the lengths she was willing to go as a young adult to regain the love of an old boyfriend. She pestered and annoyed all her friends with her obsessive moping until, of course, one of them made a very logical suggestion.
With a wink and a chuckle, she laid bare the uncertainty and pain often at the center of love and romance.
On picking a man to flirt with at a bar: “You look attainable.”
On marriage and fights: “My husband called me passive-aggressive. I told him to go fuck himself. In an email. Saved in drafts. But he’ll find it.”
And: “I’m still in my first marriage. I shouldn’t talk about it like it’s so temporary; my current husband hates that.”
Eisenberg closed with the story of how she met, wooed, and was wooed by that husband, in spite of herself, with a thousand paper cranes hidden in box her husband wouldn’t open for her and forbade her from peeking into. “So now I’m terrified that when I open it, and what if it has his ex-girlfriend’s severed head inside and oh my God, she’s prettier than me? I’m not equipped to handle that!”
