Do you guys believe the weather we’ve been having? All this rain, 50-degree days in January…it’s crazy.
Okay, so my small talk needs a bit of work. (A lot of work.) But you know whose doesn’t? Colin Quinn’s. He’s made an art of it. In fact, he’s made a whole show of it.
His latest one-man piece, Colin Quinn: Small Talk, at the newly refurbished Lucille Lortel Theatre, proves just how tough it is to talk to strangers about anything and everything—not to mention how important. And over the course of 90 minutes, like a Brooklyn-born Yoda, Quinn attempts to school us in the ways of casual conversation, netiquette, and oversharing.
[Read Frank Scheck’s ★★★★☆ review here.]
“Between phones, air pods, and self-checkout, small talk is down 87 percent,” Quinn says. But he’s doing his best to bring up that number. He loves small talk. “I get in the elevator with my neighbors and I small-talk them, and I usually break the ice. Meanwhile, they should be breaking the ice with me—I’m the famous one.” Ice-breaking: a key component of small talk. Another one? Agreement. “If you want to make friends,” he explains, “whatever you say, I just go, ‘Absolutely, absolutely, absolutely.’”
And don’t get him started on social media. Or, actually, please do get him started. “Ten percent of people are opinion addicts, and they’ve got to give their opinion all the time.” Also: “If you post more than five times a day you should be in a 72-hour psychiatric hold.” (Wait…even during college football season? Oops.) He holds forth on viral videos, SnapChat, FaceTime, OnlyFans, podcasts—all things that have contributed to the death of small talk. On the internet, he says, “everyone is funny with no jokes, smart with no solutions, tough with no fights.” He also meditates on manners, or the lack thereof, online—“It’s the first time in history you can threaten people, curse them out, and not either have to run or have a physical confrontation”—envisioning a Montague-Capulet conversation spoken in 21st-century internet slang (“Do you quarrel basic bitch?” “As I pray, what fuckery, your grace?”); 10/10 would watch that modernized Romeo and Juliet.
Naturally, he wades into politics as well. You’d expect nothing less from the performer-writer of 2019’s Red State Blue State. Not surprisingly, he’s unimpressed with the level of political discourse online: “Intellectuals, celebrities, the rich—it doesn’t matter. Every back and forth ends with ‘Fuck you, you piece of shit.’” He also has a very credible Bible-adjacent theory linking the internet to the fall of man, Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden to online porn, and the Seven Deadly Sins to the social networks (plus TikTok as the Tower of Babel). And he suggests annual Rotten Tomatoes ratings for all of us: “Just like a psychological profile where your friends, coworkers, and your family all give you a rating every year.”
Of course, he goes way beyond small talk in the show. But if you listen closely, you’ll realize: Quinn is giving theatergoers loads of topics to use in their own conversations. He’s not only a good small talker but a generous one as well.
Small Talk opened Jan. 23, 2023, at the Lucille Lortel Theatre and runs through May 6. Tickets and information: colinquinnshow.com
