Colin Quinn’s new show Red State, Blue State – about the polarization of American politics – finds him going darker than previous shows. As usual he makes canny observations about our national character, but now he seems less sanguine about our ability to move forward.

He’s one of the better comics doing political satire – he communicates highly complicated ideas through the most mundane and absurdly funny examples. He uses images similar to those from his pocket history of the world Long Story Short, such as comparing the Greece of Pericles and Socrates to a centuries-long podcast, and musing on what Caligula would have thought of Tinder.

Quinn’s manner is engagingly off-hand – this is bigger and smarter than your usual stand-up, but it never totally leaves that sphere. He’s a sharp-eyed satirist, his take decidedly expressing a working class point of view, or at least the point of view that’s been formed by being around working class people.

Also, Quinn generally avoids stereotyping ethnic humor from the bad old days – although in one of the more off-putting bits he complains about missing ethnic humor. Here, he replaces it with regional humor, its safer cousin. For his quite funny finale he comes for each of the 50 states individually. Overall, the show is a jaunty, thought-provoking good time that I can easily recommend.

For tickets, click here.

To learn about Jonathan Warman’s directing work, see jonathanwarman.com.