The World Is Not Enough

I watched Colin Quinn's Long Story Short, a comic "history of the world in 75 minutes." He did it on Broadway and now it's showing on HBO.  I remember Quinn doing Weekend Update on Saturday Night Live and discussing issues in Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn on Comedy Central, but this was the first time I saw him attempt anything long-form.

I like comedians being given a chance to pull off something bigger than just a series of jokes.  Lily Tomlin's one-woman Broadway show (written by Jane Wagner) The Search For Signs Of Intelligent Life In The Universe may have been the best thing she ever did.  Jackie Mason's Broadway performance, The World According To Me (only a bit above a glorified stand-up routine), deservedly returned him to the top.  Unfortunately, Quinn does not score so high.

There are entertaining moments, and a pace that never lingers, but for all its breadth, the show doesn't say much.  Quinn gallops through history, zeroing in on various places around the globe, but none of these segments is particularly clever.  They mostly utilize the same type of joke--take an old period (Ancient Greece, China, whatever) and relate it to--or really reduce it to--some modern-style everyday street talk.  If his insights were more penetrating, it might have worked, but he has (or uses) only the most cursory knowledge of history, generally relying on stereotypes for comic fodder. What could have been a tour de force becomes a farrago of ethnic jokes and misinformation.

I'm not saying doing such a show is easy, but Quinn either didn't have the chops, the depth or the discipline to pull it off.