Robin Williams performed a 75 minute set at a sold out Mohegan Sun Arena on Saturday night
Robin Williams
UNCASVILLE _ Robin Williams opened his 75 minute stand-up set at the Mohegan Sun Arena on Saturday night with a scatter-shot, but relevant rant about the recent weather woes on the East Coast seemingly setting the stage for an evening of comic relief.
Those first five minutes offered digs at Connecticut Light and Power, the name Sandy (rather benign, kind of like a serial killer named Timmy), and the natural disasters faced at his California residence which he referred to as “God’s Etch-a-Sketch.”
His best lines may have been storm related, as he compared divorce in the South to tornadoes (“either way, someone is losing a trailer”).
Williams also did well with his discussion about smart phones, the cloud, and his new “app” called the Moral GPS that warns when the girl you are texting is younger than your daughter.
“Re-route.”
Unfortunately, the longer Williams went on the less relevant he became, offering profanity laced one liners that you’ve probably heard around the water-cooler (minus the profanity) during the Bush administration.
His political humor was particularly off-topic. Williams was only able to muster glancing blows at current political targets and instead focused more on non-candidates like Sarah Palin and George W. Bush.
He seemed fixated on Bush.
Even while admitting that the former President Bush was no longer a public figure, having gone into “the wit-less protection program”, the comedian spent a good portion of his routine comparing Bush to the Dustin Hoffman character in “Rain Man.”
Williams also found time in his political skewering to revisit the Bill Clinton / Monica Lewinsky saga, a storyline that is more than 15 years old.
With three fairly recent televised debates, election night coverage that featured a Karl Rove meltdown, and that very day’s announcement that Florida’s votes had finally been tabulated, it would seem even the simplest of comic minds could get by without having to go back to the Clinton administration.
Williams’ overuse of “the F word” became a bit of annoyance as he was unable to structure a sentence without dropping it in somewhere. All of the characters he depicted used it liberally from the Pope, to his GPS, and even God.
The sold out room seemed a bit startled when Williams said “goodnight” after a short one-hour stint on the stage. He did return for a quick encore.