The Off-Broadway Theatre Review: SoHo Playhouse‘s Tragedy Plus Time

By Dennis W.

How do you feel about death and grief? It seems like a straightforward question but try to answer it and you’ll trigger all kinds of replies from anger, sadness, and laughter. Yes, laughter. Comic Ed Byrne’s show Tragedy Plus Time playing at the SoHo Playhouse during its Fringe Encore Series touches on grief, tears, and most of all laughs. He tells us the title is a reworking of a Mark Twain’s quote, “Humor is tragedy plus time.” And makes his case hilariously.

Byrne has a kind of machine gun delivery with spurts and stops as he seems to jump around the stage as he animates his stories. He starts off with some lighter jokes like being called out by a couple of 6-year-olds as he attempts to help them retrieve a soccer ball that rolled into the street or how New York now stinks of weed everywhere.

But then bam, he hits you in between the eyes with a question: Is it too soon to joke about his younger brother’s death a year ago? That question can make some people squirm. At the performance I attended, the audience seemed really ready to go along with Byrne and find out. He didn’t seem to hold anything back. He talked about his brother’s diagnosis, hospitalization, and untimely death at 44 from liver damage along with his brother’s habit of leaving a gathering without saying goodbye. Byrne calls it an “Irish goodbye” and then says he never heard of it.

He spins it all into 60 minutes of laughs. Even when he’s describing how Byrne and his brother didn’t speak for a year during his brother’s last 16 months of his life and how small things can get in the way. Byrne’s edgy style pulls his audience through all the brotherly drama with tears and laughs. There were moments when even he seemed to get a little choked up.

Byrne also talks about his reviews and makes it plain he’s very interested in stars and I’m ready to weigh in. Tragedy Plus Time gets 5 stars. The show is on target: witty, insightful, introspective, reverent, irreverent, and most of all full laughs. Byrne has dug deep into himself and bares his innermost feelings to come up with a great show. So, I guess it’s not too early.