It's accurate to describe comic Colin Quinn as a "Saturday Night Live" alum, and most fans and writers do. After all, it was in that context that Quinn became well known. But Quinn is a very smart, funny comedian whose talent and vision far exceeds being associated with a few years and bits on "SNL."

His two most recent one-man shows, for example — "New York Story" and the current "One in Every Crowd" (both directed by Jerry Seinfeld) — have proven to be as prescient as they are laugh-inducing. In the former, Quinn, a native of a culturally diverse neighborhood in the Bronx, gives a hometown perspective to the various indigenous ethnic groups in the city. It's wise, perceptive, affectionate, occasionally brutal, and consistently hilarious.

"One in Every Crowd" focuses on the bigger-picture landscape of America at large and, with some of the material dating back a few years, it eerily forecasts the hardline split between blue- and red-state philosophies. It'd be frightening stuff if it weren't so funny. Well, hell, it's STILL frightening. But we might as well laugh, right?

Quinn brings his "One in Every Crowd" shop Saturday to the Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center in Old Saybrook.

Colin Quinn, 8 p.m. Saturday, Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center; 300 Main St., Old Saybrook; $45-$48; (860) 510-0453.

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