Almost a year after walking off the stage in Hartford after being heckled, comedian Dave Chappelle performed a nearly two-hour set at Radio City Music Hall and took another dig at Hartford.
Chappelle immediately referenced that August night in Hartford during a tangent on North Korea, saying that if leader Kim Jong Un were to use an atom bomb, he might consider Hartford, according to an Associated Press report on the show.
Chappelle first bashed Hartford last August, when he shut down his act 10 minutes in, then sat silently on a stool for around 25 minutes. Videos of the local performance quickly went viral online.
The comment he reportedly made in New York on Wednesday was similar to one he made in Chicago last year, just days after his ill-fated Hartford performance.
“I don’t want anything bad to happen to the United States, but if North Korea ever drops a nuclear bomb on this country, I swear to God, I hope it lands in Hartford, Connecticut,” he said during the September 2013 show. Then he told the Chicago crowd he'll never come back to Hartford.
Chappelle, who famously abandoned his acclaimed and lucrative Comedy Central show in 2005, has largely shunned the public eye since last year resuming his stand-up career.
The show on Wednesday was the first of nine scheduled for Chappelle at Radio City, easily his biggest platform in years.
Music acts like the Roots, Nas and Janelle Monae are to join him later, but the kick-off show began with the veteran Washington D.C. comic Tony Woods as the opener and an intro from, of all people, James Lipton.
Lipton, who hosted Chappelle years ago on "Inside the Actors Studio," repeated the unusual warnings posted around Radio City prohibiting not just recording but heckling and even texting. The rules (which weren't strictly enforced) spoke to Chappelle's unease about stepping back into the limelight, as well as an incident from last August.
Of his abrupt exit from "Chappelle's Show" he said: "I just didn't feel like doing it anymore. It was dramatic, but I feel better."
When someone shouted that he should bring back the show, Chappelle joked that he'll do it right after making "Half-Baked 2" -- an even unlikelier return to his past (his 1998 stoner comedy "Half-Baked").
In the end, Chappelle looked reluctant to leave.
"This has been swell," he said, before adding several more anecdotes.
Most of the shows at Radio City Music Hall are sold out, according to the TicketMaster Website, but there are some tickets for a couple of the shows.
For more on Chappelle's appearance in New York, see the review in the New York Times.
