Rachel Bloom: Death, Let Me Do My Show Off-Broadway Reviews

The songs are the highlights here. Bloom is especially good at puncturing emotion with surreal detail, as when she sings the tender “Lullaby for a Newborn,” then reminds us she had been cradling her bottle of water swathed in a towel. More than blunt language — a tool that loses its sharpness with use — this absurdist vein effectively draws laughs, but it also underscores the show’s real subject: the often cruel arbitrariness of life.

Seen that way, resisting Death’s demands is also about resisting letting the trauma plot overtake your own comedic style just for the sake of dramatic heft. On the one hand, I did side with Death, in that, though it may be cruel to the performer, for real catharsis to arrive you want something blunter and more exposed than this. On the other hand, Bloom is so good in her default mode, with a glint in her eye and dozens of curse words in her mouth, that she wins you over to her helter-skelter view of the world. She wins Death himself over too, or at least manages to get him to sing along with her about the cum trees.

And yet, still, at the end, Bloom does make us laugh. But there is no easy reconciliation with Death; what we finally see, what Bloom finally imagines, is an uneasy tango to that “cum tree” song. The living, Bloom astutely concludes, don’t have a choice. Sorry for the downer, she intimates, but jokes can’t and don’t help. We must all live with Death.

Subsequent songs – nonspecifically credited to a quartet of composers including Suffs’ Shaina Taub – show off Bloom’s genuine gifts as a singer. “Lullaby for a Newborn,” with its panic-stricken extrapolations – her daughter came into a an already topsy-turvy world with complications – is a heart-wrencher. Hull, as the outcast Death, gets to deliver the parody/critique “I Feel Just Like Dear Evan Hansen.” The pinnacle, though, is Bloom’s scatological takedown of a soppy kitsch mythos known as “the rainbow bridge.”

And so here it is, but is it the right show? To that blunt query, Bloom’s audience, whom she addressed as Boomers, would shout a resounding yes and, at curtain, would standingly ovate. As for me, not a Boomer, I have to say no. I’d go farther than declaring merely that it’s not my cup of tea. I contend that the unapologetically aggressive Bloom – an obviously intelligent and extremely proficient presence in glittering pants suit and gold high heels – has the wherewithal to put together 85 intermissionless minutes that deal more movingly with death while remaining just as risible.

The show instead leaves the impression that Bloom is rushing to process grief, joy, and the last decade of her career before the pop culture moment moves on. Perhaps with more room for reflection, her next show will strike a different chord.