Presumably due to the self-absorbed, carefree shambling of many ticket-holders into sold-out Mohegan Sun Arena Friday night, the Comedy All-Star Gala hosted by Kevin Hart started well past schedule. According to my in-my-seat-on-time, nothing-better-to-do calculations, the show was delayed one minute for every quarter-inch the 5-foot-4 Hart is under six feet.

How do you like that, math wizards?

Besides Hart, Sarah Silverman, Margaret Cho, Dave Attell and Keith Robertson also performed and, for the most part, it was a consistently funny evening, although there were very few stories or punch lines that can be printed in this newspaper.

As the emcee, Hart, one of Earth's most successful entertainers, who's latest film, "What Now?," debuted in theaters Friday, kicked off the evening. He effortlessly commanded the stage — a boxing-ring shaped construct in the middle of the arena, and started with an extended riff of gambling and casinos. It was surprising and soft-target stuff, but Hart hit his stride talking about his recent marriage ("where did all those sweatpants come from?"); the confusion that ensued in a phone conversation about a computer password that happened to be the "F*** you"; and his son — who attends a prestigious prep school and says things like "Are you asking for an observation?" — reacting to Hart's father's delight in an old-school, Lionel-style train set.

Robinson was up next. The least known on the bill, he's nonetheless a legend in New York City comedy clubs. He scored big with remarks about Donald Trump's rapidly declining appeal to female voters. "His rating's way low with women," Robinson said. "Bill Cosby has a higher approval rating."

Attell, wearing his signature ball cap and bum apparel, skewered the "Connecticut crowd" in the arena, saying we looked "like a hedge fund that went out for Krispy Kreme." He also posited that "I'll bet an owl tastes like a well-read chicken" and that "the Kentucky Derby is like NASCAR for the Amish." 

Cho explained that, at 14, she told her mother she wanted to be a comic. Her mom's answer (delivered in a stoic Asian accent): "Maybe it's better if you just died." From there, Cho roared into relentless and oft-hilarious observations on male and female genitalia — and the imaginative pretzel-configuration possibilities thereof — that made her half-hour set seem like nothing more than a pitch session for a porn industry sit-com. I loved it, but more than a few "senior citizens" slinked out during the presentation, and a few "first-date" couples seemed to conspicuously avoid looking at one another as Cho spun onward.

Silverman, the most conceptual of the comedians on the bill, took the stage with a sheaf of notes. "I'm a professional ... pot smoker," she explained. Early on, she seemed distracted by a cheap-seats heckler who continually professed love for Silverman, but gradually picked up momentum. Her stories, delivered in a detached and vaguely whining tone, typically take a while to unfold, but the payoff twists can be uproariously brutal. The best? When Silverman spoke about the agony of a recent full-body hair-removal experience. Her boyfriend then called from Guatamala, where he'd spent the morning with a woman whose son had just been murdered. "You think that's bad?" Silverman asked, shaking her head in memory of the waxing agony.

r.koster@theday.com