One! with Jim Rash

The Lowdown

No script. No scene partners. No plan. Just Jim Rash, a room full of strangers shouting suggestions, and about an hour of one man building a whole play in real time and then playing everyone in it.

One! is a Groundlings staple, and Rash, who was Dean Pelton on Community and won an Oscar for co-writing The Descendants, has been doing it for years. Each night gets built out of whatever the audience hands him: a premise, a relationship, a job nobody should have. He plays all of it, switching characters mid-sentence, and the show has never existed before and will never exist again.

It lands at SoHo Playhouse on Vandam Street for one week only, September 22 through 28. The house holds 199, so it is a small room for a very large swing. If it goes wonderfully, you were there. If it goes sideways, you were really there. That is the deal you are buying, and it is a good one.