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
The Football Bro - Pat McAfee brings a casual new style to ESPN.
If, on a cool weekend morning in autumn, you happen to be watching “College GameDay,” on ESPN, don’t worry about figuring out which of the broadcasters behind the improbably long desk is Pat McAfee. He’s the one with the roast-pork tan, his hair cut high and tight, likely tieless among his more businesslike colleagues. The rest of the onair crew—Lee Corso, Rece Davis, Kirk Herbstreit, Desmond Howard, and, newly, the former University of Alabama coach Nick Saban—tend to look and dress and talk like participants in an old-school Republican-primary debate. McAfee, though, favors windowpane checks on his jackets and a slip of chest poking out from behind his two or three open buttons. If the others are politicians, he’s the cool-coded megachurch pastor who sometimes acts as their spiritual adviser.
The Dark Time. - On the Arctic border of Russia and Norway, an espionage war is emerging.
On the Arctic border of Russia and Norway, an espionage war is emerging. The point of contact between NATO and Russia's nuclear stronghold is the small town of Kirkenes. For years, Russia has treated the area as a laboratory, testing intelligence and influence operations before replicating them across Europe.
MIRROR IMAGES
‘A Different Man” and The Substance.”
OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY
Proximity to wealth proves perilous in Rumaan Alam’ novel Entitlement.”
EYES WIDE SHUT
How Monet shared a private world.
WITH THE MOSTEST
The very rich hours of Pamela Harriman.
HUGO HAMILTON AUTOBAHN
On the Autobahn outside Frankfurt. November. The fields were covered in a thin sheet of snow.
TRY IT ON
How Law Roach reimagined red-carpet style.
SORRY I'M NOT YOUR CLOWN TODAY
Bowen Yang's trip to Oz, by way of conversion therapy and S..N.L.”
SNIFF TEST
A maverick perfumer tries to make his mark on a storied fashion house.
