Veteran comedian Brian Regan will soon be coming to St. Louis for a stop on his national theater tour.

Regan transitioned from the comedy club circuit to exclusively touring larger and larger venues across the United States a number of years ago. Despite his rise in prominence, his process for developing comedic material has remained relatively the same. Regan explained that jokes are still produced in the classic way–trying new ideas out on an audience and seeing where they go. These ideas have simply been introduced to larger and larger audiences over the years.

Given Regan’s touring record, I was curious if he had developed an innate understanding of the various regions he visits and their unique comedic sensibilities. Even though there are small discrepancies, Regan tries not to cater to these regional quirks. He simply develops material that makes him laugh, as he always has, and carves a show out of that material.

It’s this material that has driven Regan’s massive success for over 30 years. He is widely recognized as a comedian with unprecedented mass appeal, not only for his accessible brand of observational humor, nuanced by hilarious physicality and expressiveness in his stand-up routines, but for the fact that his enormous arsenal of jokes is entirely “clean,” and has been practically from the start.

Regan somewhat rejects the “clean comedian” label, as being family friendly isn’t necessarily the point of his humor, and he has no problem with fellow comedians who play with racier material and language. In a recent interview with NPR, Regan notes that cursing just “didn’t feel natural,” when he started doing stand-up, so it never stuck. But whatever did stick worked for him, and continues to work to this day, as Regan’s career continues to expand and draw praise from fellow comedians including Chris Rock, Bill Burr, Ray Romano and Jerry Seinfeld.

I was first introduced to Regan’s comedic genius by his two appearances on Jerry Seinfeld’s “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.” In 2017, he released his first Netflix comedy special, “Nunchucks and Flamethrowers,” and in 2018, he wrote and starred in a four-episode Netflix comedy series, “Stand Up and Away! With Brian Regan,” of which Jerry Seinfeld is also an executive producer. The new series presents a “comedy hybrid” of stand-up and sketches along with a variety of audience interaction and street interviews sprinkled in.

Regan explained that he had several old routines that people still liked, and wanted to figure out a way to “repackage” them. He decided to develop sketches that could pair with the original stand-up bits. Since he already sees his comedy as formatted similarly to vignettes, building sketch comedy out of his existing material made sense. He noted that he was careful not to simply rehash a joke in a sketch setting, but produce a companion that enhanced the audience’s experience of the subject matter. He wanted to “let stand-up remain stand-up,” and not replace the images that naturally arise in audience’s minds during an observational joke.

The unique series is extremely funny and available for streaming on Netflix now, and we can look forward to a second Netflix comedy special by the end of next year. Tickets are now available for Brian Regan’s show at the Stifel Theatre on September 7.