Colin Quinn: Long Story Short

Former Saturday Night Live star and Comedy Central regular Colin Quinn is bringing his one-man comedy show Colin Quinn: Long Story Short to Water Tower Place's Broadway Playhouse for a three-week engagement beginning August 24th. Directed by Jerry Seinfeld, Long Story Short was extended twice on Broadway and was nominated for a Drama Desk Award. It ran as an HBO special in April 2011, and Quinn has subsequently toured the show in East Hampton, Philadelphia, Montreal, and New Haven earlier this summer before coming to Chicago.

Long Story Short is Quinn's very own and very brief history of the world, a 75-minute comedic crash course in human civilization (complete with maps and other multimedia) in which Quinn sardonically chronicles the rise and fall of great world empires and the larger-than-life figures who ruled them. From Julius Caesar as a mobster to blinged-out 15th century St. Peter's Basilica as a "Death Row Records release party from the '90s" to America's Founding Fathers' insistence on "the pursuit of happiness" being blamed for Dr. Phil, Quinn spares no one, and his common theme throughout is thus: the best of human intentions ruined, inevitably and hilariously, by the worst of human instincts.

A native of Brooklyn, Quinn began as a stand-up comic in the '80s and served as co-host of MTV's Remote Control game show before joining Saturday Night Live in 1995. On SNL, his characters included Gene the ex-convict and Lenny the Lion, a talking lion obsessed with self-betterment, and he served as the "Weekend Update" anchor from 1998-2000. During this time he also made his Broadway debut in his one-man show Colin Quinn: An Irish Wake, which he co-wrote with comedian Lou DiMaggio. Post-SNL, he is probably best known as the host of Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn, a round-table talk show that ran for two seasons on Comedy Central following The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Though he reportedly turned down the role of Scott Evil in Austin Powers (later taken by Seth Green) to focus on his solo work, he has since made sporadic appearances in films such as Night At The Roxbury and Grown-Ups.

Colin Quinn: Long Story Short, directed by Jerry Seinfeld, runs August 24-September 10, 2011 at the Broadway Playhouse at Water Tower Place, 175 East Chestnut St. Tickets can be purchased at ticketmaster.com.

Luke Heiden
Contributing Writer