Colin Quinn Returns to Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center

When comedian Colin Quinn takes to the stage June 20 at the Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center, he’ll be back on familiar turf. The one-night show marks his third appearance at WHBPAC since 2008, most recently a little over a year ago.

Quinn also has another notable tie within the community that occurred right across the street and dates all the way back to 1982. That summer, not long before cutting his comedy chops on Manhattan’s club circuit, it was here where the famed Irish funnyman once worked as a salesclerk at Westhampton T Shirts.

In the more than four decades since, Quinn and owner Jim Flood have remained friendly and he plans to come to the show. “I had wonderful times there,” recalls the scraggily haired satirist. “Jim and his late wife were always so nice to me.”

While Westhampton holds especially potent memories for the Brooklyn born and raised Quinn (who studied theater at Stony Brook University but never graduated), he has an equal affinity for all of the Hamptons. He has also been vacationing and hanging out here with friends like fellow funnyman and East Hampton resident Jerry Seinfeld for years.

“It’s a magical place. As soon as you get to the Hamptons, it’s like stepping into one of these beautiful little towns out of a movie. I love the beach even though I don’t look like it. I love the ocean and I like being in the sun. And Montauk, I mean, I could live there forever just because they’ve kept it so small.”

As for some of the material he’ll do when he returns WHBPAC, Quinn declined discuss any specific bits. Nevertheless, it’s almost a given he’ll likely be serving up another hilarious, razor-sharp, rapid-fire mix of caustic political commentary and wry social observations that made him a bona fide household name hosting Comedy Central’s Tough Crowd in the early 2000s—a show he says “could never get on television today”—all the while fidgeting around the stage and finger pointing passionately to drive his point home.

“The world,” demurs Quinn when pressed further about subjects that might be ripe for his riffing during the upcoming show. “There is always going to be topics and what I’m talking about today might change by the time that happens. All that kind of stuff will be in there, how the world is now and where it’s going to go.”

Quinn’s first big break came in the late 1980s when a scout from MTV plucked him to co-host the all-music cable channel’s first game show Remote Control, also featuring two other up and coming comics, Denis Leary and Adam Sandler.

Eight years later, Quinn hit pay dirt again after Saturday Night Live executive producer and Amagansett resident Lorne Michaels hired him as a writer and featured player on the venerable late-night NBC variety show from which he was noticeably absent during the recent 50th anniversary special (along with other former cast members Dan Ackroyd, Dennis Miller, Bill Hader and Dana Carvey) this past February.

In 1998, Quinn became a regular SNL cast member—a two-year stint that included an awkward turn hosting “Weekend Update” after Norm McDonald was fired along with such characters as “Joe Blow” and “Lenny the Lion”—before leaving in 2000.

It was also during this period when he began cementing his reputation as a master monologist, penning his first one-man show co-written with Lou DiMaggio, Colin Quinn: An Irish Wake, which debuted on Broadway in 1998. Six others followed—among them Colin Quinn Long Story Short and The Coloring Book: A Comedian Solves Race Relations in America (both directed by Jerry Seinfeld), The New York Story and Red State Blue State in 2019, which aired as CNN’s first comedy special that same year.

In between, Quinn wrote two books, directed and starred in the HBO-Max comedy special Colin Quinn & Friends: A Parking Lot Comedy Show and appeared in dozens of films, including 2015’s Train Weck, directed and produced by Judd Apatow, which was written by and starred Amy Schumer.

When it comes to his stand-up, Quinn says he prefers sticking to just one topic because it allows him to stay more focused.

“I feel like I’m already and ADD type of person, so I feel like I need something to keep me from really digressing. Then it gets really distracting for people because I’m not one of those people that when they start improvising the audience likes it. Only a few other comedians enjoy it but the audience really doesn’t get it.”

For those comedians who do, however, in recent years Quinn has become something of an elder statesman on Manhattan’s stand-up scene. When he’s not on the road or working on other projects, he also remains a familiar fixture at many of the city’s top clubs, most regularly at the Comedy Cellar, where he still regularly performs at least three nights a week.

“The whole thing of figuring out what’s funny about anything that’s going on and trying to find your angle is still really rewarding,” says Quinn who turned 67 earlier this month. “I hate to use the word rewarding because it sounds like I’m from the 1950s, but that’s exactly how I feel.”