Summary
Jeff Arcuri’s first full-length special immediately establishes him as one of the funniest and most likeable working comedians of the current era.
Being likeable will get you a long way. And if there’s one thing about Jeff Arcuri, it’s that he’s likeable. He’s immediately infectious. He’s also one of the few comedians to laugh at his own jokes in a way that isn’t annoying, and is instead more like he’s genuinely surprised that he said something funny. That doesn’t sound like the quality of a confident stand-up, but it taps into something key about Arcuri’s self-effacing appeal. He’s the quintessential aw-shucks comedian, the kind who puts the audience at ease by reminding them that he’s often the butt of the jokes he’s selling. Nice to Meet You, his first full-length special, is the kind of introduction that solidifies Arcuri as one of the best working comedians of the current crop, at least in part because it feels like he’s learning on the job and has no real idea how he got there.
Long-time fans will know, of course, since Arcuri has been working the comedy circuit for over a decade, but the sudden influx of newcomers over the last few years is largely thanks to crowd work virality, the contemporary blueprint for comedians to make a name for themselves. This hour combines written material with off-the-cuff banter with the audience, but Arcuri is better at weaving the two together than almost anyone. The collaborative approach is enhanced by a rare theatre-in-the-round format (the special was shot in the Celebrity Theatre in Phoenix, Arizona), which is one of the smarter decisions here, along with beginning in media res with Arcuri handling a heckler in a clip that doesn’t even make the final cut.
Arcuri’s facility for letting a topic flow from written to crowd work and back again is immediately exemplified in a bit about his dad — and people in the comments under his social media clips — assuming he’s gay, which quickly picks up traction and goes in unexpected directions with feedback from the crowd. He does the same thing with other ideas, such as the kind of innocuous but embarrassing mistakes that people make that continue to haunt them long after the event in question, or classic “old man” comments that men tend to make involuntarily as they get deeper into their 30s.
There’s other stuff that has clearly been worked out. Arcuri has a facility for impressions — there’s a bit about ordering soy milk in Spanish that is a good example — and physical comedy, the latter coming to the fore primarily in an eerily accurate depiction of a Big Mouth Billy Bass turning demonic when its batteries start to die. The gently wagging rear fin, depicted as one slightly raised leg, is the kind of simple touch that ends up being significantly funnier than you’d expect the longer it goes on.
But the highlight of Nice to Meet You is its late transition into more serious material, as a visibly emotional Arcuri talks about his wife’s — former Bachelorette star Katie Thurston — Stage 4 breast cancer diagnosis and ongoing battle, including a bit about IVF for good measure. This is Arcuri’s likeable everyman shtick in weaponized form. So many comedians so often seem disingenuous when they talk about their personal lives, especially when they present relatively commonplace experiences as if they’re the only people to have ever experienced them, but Arcuri is the opposite. His openness only endears him to the audience more.
This sense of vulnerability, embarrassment, and honesty is central to Arcuri’s appeal, but it’s also central to comedy in general, tapping into something essential about why we crack jokes and how valuable laughter can be in reducing terrifyingly all-consuming issues to a manageable, human scale. The ease with which he transitions into this material speaks to his skill as a joke-writer and performer, especially given a relative lack of big-stage experience. He’s a comedian to keep a seriously close eye on.
