A backdrop, a stool, a beverage, a microphone. A man wanders on stage and grumbles self-deprecatingly; the audience fidgets in anticipation. The world is in flames, and such familiar comforts are an escape. Please, let us laugh.
We're living through a comedy-astheatre boom: metatheatrical quasiauto biographies (Kate Berlant, Daniel Kitson), avant-garde character work (Natalie Palamides, Cole Escola), quicksilver candor (Jerrod Carmichael, Taylor Tomlinson), and Spalding Gray-esque evening-length storytelling (anything written or produced by Mike Birbiglia). But Colin Quinn, in his soothing, pseudo-cantankerous standup special "Small Talk," at the Lucille Lortel, wants you to know right away that he won't be bothered with all that young person's guff. He's skeptical of social media, if you can believe it. He mocks his own untucked shirt and his gym shoes. ("I'm an old man," he says, "and I'm dressed like a twelve-year-old boy.") His performance is scripted, and loosely organized around themes, but we are mostly in shaggy-comic territory. "Small Talk" is a club set barely disguised as a show.
Quinn's beloved stage persona, tailored and then washed soft by a million tour dates, is a Brooklyn stoop philosopher, an Irish American blue-collar sage. In various comedy specials for Netflix and HBO, Quinn has gruffly shepherded his audiences through a history of the world ("Long Story Short," from 2011), American politics ("Unconstitutional," from 2015), and the formation of New York's demographic hodgepodge ("The New York Story," from 2016). In that last production, buffed to a high shine by its director, Jerry Seinfeld, Quinn talked frankly, and deliberately stereotypically, about race a provocative highwire act in which his tightly packed joke writing and sawtooth bonhomie served him well.
Denne historien er fra February 06, 2023-utgaven av The New Yorker.
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Denne historien er fra February 06, 2023-utgaven av The New Yorker.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
YULE RULES
“Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point.”
COLLISION COURSE
In Devika Rege’ first novel, India enters a troubling new era.
NEW CHAPTER
Is the twentieth-century novel a genre unto itself?
STUCK ON YOU
Pain and pleasure at a tattoo convention.
HEAVY SNOW HAN KANG
Kyungha-ya. That was the entirety of Inseon’s message: my name.
REPRISE
Reckoning with Donald Trump's return to power.
WHAT'S YOUR PARENTING-FAILURE STYLE?
Whether you’re horrifying your teen with nauseating sex-ed analogies or watching TikToks while your toddler eats a bagel from the subway floor, face it: you’re flailing in the vast chasm of your child’s relentless needs.
COLOR INSTINCT
Jadé Fadojutimi, a British painter, sees the world through a prism.
THE FAMILY PLAN
The pro-life movement’ new playbook.
President for Sale - A survey of today's political ads.
On a mid-October Sunday not long ago sun high, wind cool-I was in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, for a book festival, and I took a stroll. There were few people on the streets-like the population of a lot of capital cities, Harrisburg's swells on weekdays with lawyers and lobbyists and legislative staffers, and dwindles on the weekends. But, on the façades of small businesses and in the doorways of private homes, I could see evidence of political activity. Across from the sparkling Susquehanna River, there was a row of Democratic lawn signs: Malcolm Kenyatta for auditor general, Bob Casey for U.S. Senate, and, most important, in white letters atop a periwinkle not unlike that of the sky, Kamala Harris for President.
