This comedian is New Yorker by birth, but Philly by attitude
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Philly is the closest thing comedian Elyssa Phillips has come to finding love. Photo: Courtesy of Elyssa Phillips
Comedian Elyssa Phillips is a New Yorker, but she grew up to be a Philadelphian.
- Except in one key way: Philly sports fans are "a different breed of human," she tells Axios. "They're like Neanderthals."
Why it matters: That joke may or may not land with Philadelphians still touchy about the Birds' lousy season — but Phillips hopes the rest of her material packs the punch of a bone-crunching Rocky haymaker.
Driving the news: Phillips is headlining a show Sunday at Claude's Comedy Club & Bar, which opened earlier this year as a welcome addition to South Philly's nightlife.
The big picture: Phillips got her start in theater but pivoted to stand-up after moving to the West Coast, where she's opened for comedy heavyweights like Jay Leno and Iliza Shlesinger.
- She's also appeared in a bunch of TV shows, including HBO's "Hacks" and "Silicon Valley," ABC's "Fresh Off the Boat" and Netflix's "Leanne."
Zoom in: Funny how life works out: Phillips met Claude's manager more than a decade ago while attending classes at the now-shuttered University of the Arts.
- After a long time away, the show gave her an excuse to return to Philly, where she discovered love, heartbreak and, above all, herself.
Flashback: Phillips once dated Derek Bodner, now the Sixers beat writer for PHLY Sports.
- They lived together in Hawthorne until breaking up after seven years.
- All these years later, Phillips is still single.
Reality check: This has the makings of the Philliest love story ever: Two former flames rekindling their romance in LOVE Park, decades after the city first brought them together.
- But then comes a gruff Philly rebuff that sounds like a preamble to Phillips' act, which dives into her adventures and misadventures as a single, middle-aged Jewish woman who's grown ambivalent about finding true love.
What they're saying: "I mean, I messaged him about the show," says Phillips, who prefers for you to guess her age. "We broke up 80 million years ago. … It's like Philly in your 20s. Where you grow up to be the person you're going to be. And we grew up to be the people that we grew up into — not two people that should be together."
- "Derek needs to live. He needs suburbia. And he needs a backyard with a dog and a white picket fence and barbecues and kids running around. And I'm a city girl."
Yes, but: Phillips has learned that comedy doesn't always translate across cultural divides — and sometimes a silent audience isn't a hostile one.
- "I once performed in Paris, Texas, and I started Jewish, and they weren't laughing, and I was like, 'All right, I'm just going to switch,'" Phillips says.
- "At the end of the show, they came up to me and they were like, 'Oh my God, you were so funny. We love you so much. We just didn't know if we could laugh with the Jewish jokes up top. We've never met a Jewish person before.'"
- "And I was like, 'Oh, Elyssa, they're not anti-Semitic. They just have never met a Jewish person.'"
OK, so Phillips' Jewishness is established. But how about her Phillyness?
- She trained to become a figure competitor at the old 12th Street Gym, loved eating at the former Sabrina's in the Italian Market, once managed the Philadelphia theater company New Paradise Laboratories and frequented the iconic Little Pete's diner.
- Her funniest Philly experience? Standing outside a downtown TV shop, high on mushrooms, watching "Shrek" through the window.
"My friends were like, 'Elyssa, we have to go. The cops will come, and they will understand that you are on drugs.' And I was like, 'I don't care.'"
The bottom line: Spoken like a true Philadelphian.
If you go: Sunday. Doors open at 6:30pm; the show starts at 7pm. Tickets: $24.91.