BWW Reviews: Quinn Deconstructs the City's Personality in THE NEW YORK STORY
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Jerry Seinfeld recently ruffled some feathers by expressing on a radio interview how many stand-up comics these days avoid playing colleges for fear of a politically correct backlash from younger audiences who may find their material racially insensitive.
Perhaps that viewpoint gave him extra incentive to participate as director of Colin Quinn's latest theatre monologue, The New York Story, a show that explores the rich diversified heritage of New York City one ethnic joke at a time.
"Positivity, inclusion, non-judgmentalism; those are all great qualities to have," our host advises us from his tenement stoop. "But not in New York. This city was supposed to be the sanctuary city for the judgmental, the obnoxious, the non-positive."
It's the New York personality that Quinn considers to be the city's greatest tourist attraction. It's not a nice personality, but one that's fun to be around and honest. One that has been dissolving as New Yorkers appropriate positivity and sensitivity from the rest of the country. (At one point he mocks a crime victim who can describe the clothing his attacker was wearing, but not his race because, "I don't see color.")
Beginning in the 1600s with the Lenape tribe ("They're the only ones here.... And one Dominican."), Quinn takes us on a tour of every major invasion and migration that made Gotham a combustible mixture of races and ethnicities that contributed their most obnoxious qualities to create the New York personality.
"We had the smoking from the Indians. We had the abruptness and the cursing from the Dutch. We were beginning to cultivate a personality. But there was a piece missing. Snobbery. A sense of superiority. That's where the British come in."
From the sarcasm of the Irish, the assertiveness of the Jews, the overdramatics of the Italians, the outspokenness of black people and the quick tempo of Puerto Ricans, Quinn piles up the stereotypes, but from a place of admiration and affection. A hundred years ago ethnic humor was used in vaudeville as a way of bonding the people of a city of immigrants with the attitude that nobody was above being the subject of a good-natured joke and this appears to be Quinn's vantage point.
Of course, what is good-natured and what is offensive can be subjective, but, as exemplified by his sarcastic closing bit, Quinn would rather risk ruffling feathers than live in a city of sensitive homogeny.
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