The Long Story Short review

Long Story Short
Through August 21 at the Long Wharf Theatre. Written and performed by Colin Quinn. Directed by Jerry Seinfeld.

The quintessential Colin Quinn is the gruff- sounding yet genial and reflective persona he perfected as the Weekend Update anchor on Saturday Night Live. That gig began auspiciously, with Quinn hurriedly summoned to replace Norm Macdonald, who had just been fired by an NBC exec under the specious reasoning that Macdonald was “not funny.” the firing hadn’t even made the papers when Quinn had to naked his Update debut. He turned the awkwardness into one of the most profound and heartwarming moments in the history of Saturday Night Live, introducing the news segment with a tribute to norm Macdonald, surrounding the experience in terms of working in a bar and having to suddenly take over for the bartender who’d trained and mentored you and then abruptly been dismissed.
For those of us who cherish that gracious, generous, bar- mentality side of Colin Quinn, his one man show Long Story Short has the perfect ending. After an hour of loosely connected verbal vignettes about the rise and fall of great civilizations and the origins of longstanding international and religious hostilities, Quinn brings the show into the present day with a lengthy bit presenting world relations as a bunch of guys in a bar at closing time.
It’s a brilliant bit, full of current- events detail and finely wretched characterizations. As with the whole Long Story Short show, Quinn delivers it matter-of-factly. He doesn’t punch the jokes, overly the characters or otherwise oversell the material. His steadiness, and the complexity of the concepts he’s playing with (
Arab Spring! Israel! British colonization of a quarter odd the world!) makes you listen in closer. Bits that might easily bomb in a stand up sweet in a noisy nightclub play just right on the long wharf mainstage, with Quinn in jeans and black polo shirt standing before an austere arrangement of stony golden steps and a large projection screen.
He also throws in theater- friendly routines like the one about how ths Greeks developed live drama, and soon “the average Greek child stats watching 40 hours odd theater a week.” He follows this with an imaginary meeting between Oedipus and Sophocles, with the aggrieved ruler wondering if the hero of the playwright’ s tragedy was based on him–” because, you know, my name’ s Oedipus and I fucked my mother and killed my father.”
Theater- smugwise, Quinn’s show- opening local-reference gambit is pitch perfect: “All my life I was ‘Ooh, Long Wharf!’ And notes here I am.” When the audience laughs at what may come off as deprecating– Quinn’s show comes to us, after all, after a long and successful run in his native New York, and has previously toured to Canada and Washington DC– Quinn chides the crowd. “I’m serious,” he says, and starts singing the praises not just of the Long Wharf Theatre but of the Long Wharf loading dock.
Colin Quinn is not a clown or an aggressive joke teller. He’s not a natural mimic (though his impression of Tony Bennett is pretty impressive considering that Quinn’s lack of singing skills was the basis of an ongoing routine on the game show Remote Control). His fortune is his working stiff demeanor and delivery. He paces Long Story Short as if he’s pulled up his stool at the bar, signaled a few friends, gotten comfortable, and plans to expound for a while. The 75- minute monologue is smartly broken up with black- outs where Quinn leaves the stage, the projections change, and the audience can applaud or exhale. It’s the equivalent of bathroom breaks or interruptions at the bar. The only thing missing from the loquacious, thought provoking late night mood Colin Quinn has conjured up in the theater is this: You really want to buy the man a drink.