SPRINGFIELD — MGM Springfield seems to be banking on laughter these days.
In the past three weeks, the downtown casino has brought red-hot comic John Mulaney to the MassMutual Center and best-selling author/comedienne Chelsea Handler to nearby Symphony Hall.
In addition to established stars, MGM Springfield continues to draw young talent to its Roar! Comedy Club at the refurbished Armory building on the casino grounds.
On Saturday night, the casino welcomed former “Tonight Show” host Jay Leno to Symphony Hall. He performed before more than 1,000 fans — a decent-size crowd considering Game 5 of the Calder Cop finals was taking place across the street.
Raised in Andover and a graduate of Emerson College, Leno shared stories about his Scottish-born mother and Italian-American father. The latter, a one-time prizefighter, told his son how he tired on going to a job ever day where he got punched in the face.
Other than a quick jab at President Joe Biden’s age and former president Donald Trump’s intelligence, Leno avoided politics and targeted much of his early remarks to apps that have replaced seeing a doctor, Amazon delivery and Apple Stores’ Genius Bar.
“Genius Bar, isn’t that a little pretentious?,” he asked. “Look, I will give you Einstein, Galileo and Newton, OK — but Joey with the man bun ...”
Over the course of an 80-minute set, the 72-year-old comic shared amusing stories about comic greats, like Rodney Dangerfield, and fielded a few questions from the crowd. His routine focused heavily on human foibles.
“We have this whole phenomena now of watching a whole TV show season in one sitting. How does this work? What do you do, come home from work on Friday night and put on a pair of Depends... and then you binge eat, while you binge watch.”
Leno, who has played rooms big and small for more than 50 years, wisecracked about his younger days playing mob-owned clubs in Chicago, where enforcers suggested jokes he might want to work into his act.
While Leno made mention of disgraced celebrities like Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby and former celebrity couples like Kim Kardashian and Kanye West and Amber Heard and Johnny Depp, he spent much of the night commenting on American tastes and preferences.
“Competitive eating is our sport in this country. They cover it on ESPN. This is the only country in the word where eating 300 chicken wings now makes you an athlete. And marijuana is a performance enhancing drug.”
He added, “Competitive eating is somehow now a sport, yet we still cannot quite accept soccer.”
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