Colin Quinn, the Brooklyn-born comedian and former anchor of “Weekend Update” on Saturday Night Live, recently explained in a radio interview that his stand-up routines are designed to satisfy his curiosity about “how people become the way they become.” In his new Off-Broadway show, Colin Quinn: Small Talk, the 63-year-old writer-performer focuses his comedic gaze on Americans bewitched by the Internet and ponders the extent to which their online activities affect society at large.
Quinn came of age before the digital era; he recalls spending his baby-boom youth in a lost land of good manners. For a guy with so much street credibility (and Quinn has street credibility in spades), he talks a lot about etiquette. Manners, he says, “got invented because people were beating the shit out of each other, and then someone finally said, ‘We got to come up with something.’ Even in the Middle Ages, as violent as that was, if the Montagues and Capulets talked to each other the way we talk to each other on social media, it would’ve been ten times bloodier.”
Colin Quinn, now at the Lucille Lortel Theatre in Greenwich Village, is fixing his cranky comedic gaze on the influence of the Internet and the demise of civility.
Quinn’s dim view of his fellow citizens shouldn’t surprise anyone familiar with his curmudgeonly stage persona. By and large, he regards social-media enthusiasts as crackpots, preening for an audience of random followers. “We all live,” he laments, “in a movie of our life.” Quinn’s view of the contemporary world involves a lot of crackpots.
What gets Quinn’s goat is that (in his assessment) society has lost all knack for that courteous chatter known as small talk. Quinn “loves small talk.” Getting in an elevator with neighbors, he says, “I small-talk them and I usually break the ice.” When someone resists an opening volley of small talk, Quinn is outraged: “I expect you not to violate the social contract and disagree with obvious small talk.”
Rousseau’s theory of the social contract (or an ordinary-guy notion of it) is essential to Quinn’s philosophy. He believes the isolation of online activity renders a vast number of people incapable of the kind of interaction that makes society civil. Conversation, he suggests, was a “revolutionary” development in humankind’s evolution from solitary cave-dweller to citizen of a harmonious community. Conversation “taught us to cooperate,” says Quinn, “and cooperate means you tolerate people that you don’t like.” He believes that the realm of the Internet, where correspondents are emboldened to disseminate unsolicited opinions, has put paid to small talk. Online, he says, “[E]veryone’s a Karen, not just the Karens.” According to Quinn, when an online heckler attacks a Karen, the heckler’s a Karen, too.
The comedian laments that “technologically we’ve advanced, but human nature is the exact same.” He cites the Seven Deadly Sins, which, in his view, are still with us, “only now they’re digital.” He has this all figured out: “Facebook is Envy, Twitter is Wrath. Instagram is Pride, Lust, Gluttony, Greed and Sloth.” TikTok, he says, “is the Tower of Babel or something, I don’t know.”
Despite the curmudgeonly nature of his stage persona, the Brooklyn-born comedian manages a few smiles and a great many laughs in Colin Quinn: Small Talk. Photographs by Monique Carboni.
Under James Fauvell’s sure-handed direction, Quinn takes full command of his Off-Broadway venue, often advancing as far downstage as possible to make eye contact and speak particular lines to particular audience members (though careful, in his baby-boomer politeness, not to put anyone on the spot). His performance looks like a stand-up routine in most any venue but utilizes the breadth and depth of the Lucille Lortel stage. Behind him is Zoë Hurwitz’s intriguing scenic design, which features panels that look like giant chalkboards with drawings that are never directly referenced in the monologue (though they invite contemplation in the show’s less sprightly moments).
Quinn’s stage persona is so cranky, and his bile spills out in so many directions, that it’s tempting to view Colin Quinn: Small Talk as a milestone on the baby-boom generation’s road to old-fogeydom. Yet Quinn’s 80-minute intellectual ramble is so full of horse sense that, for the most part, it’s hard to resist. Though boomers are now outnumbered by millennials, it was a surprise to find millennials outnumbering other demographics in the audience of a recent press preview. Perhaps the Internet hasn’t yet eradicated all civilized impulses. That evening, at least, a great many millennials could be heard indulging in contented small talk as they made their way up the aisle and out of the theater.
Mike Lavoie, Carlee Briglia and Brian Stern’s production of Colin Quinn: Small Talk runs at the Lucille Lortel Theatre (121 Christopher St.) through Feb. 11. Evening performances are Monday to Saturday at 7 p.m., with an additional 9 p.m. show on Fridays; matinees are Saturday at 3 p.m. On March 30, the production will reopen at Greenwich House Theatre (27 Barrow St.) for an extended run through May 6. Greenwich House performances will be Tuesday to Friday at 7 p.m., with matinees on Saturdays at 3 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. For tickets and information, visit colinquinnshow.com.
