Most comedians step on stage and open a door into their lives.

At the Michigan Theater on Friday, Brian Regan opened a door into a bizarre—yet perfectly familiar—universe where humor is in every mundane situation and around every corner.

Regan, working without props and without a single curse word, kept an adoring audience in stitches throughout an hour-long set of new material, as well as some tried-and-true bits.

Hey, when you’ve appeared on David Letterman's show some 23 times, as Regan has, people are going to have heard some of your stuff.

Not that it mattered on Friday.

Mixing his keen, offbeat observational humor with a physicality that doesn’t translate as well on television, Regan mixed the straight-faced absurdity of Steve Martin with the madcap mannerisms of Will Ferrell as he tore through seemingly disconnected riffs on everything from hotel check-ins to magazines.

“It’s easier to break up with a psycho than it is to cancel a magazine subscription,” he said. “Eventually you’re saying to the guy on the phone, ‘It’s not you, it’s me.””

And just when his act began to sound like straight-ahead stand-up, he’d throw in an existential twist.

“How about the expression ‘model prisoner?’” he asked. “Talk about putting a spin on something.

“It’s like, ‘Our nephew’s penitentiary has bestowed upon him the honor of … model prisoner.”

For all of his absurdities, Regan was at his funniest when he was breaking the fourth wall with the audience, reacting to his own jokes and becoming part of his own audience. When a joke bombed—and there were enough on Friday, arriving in rapid-fire succession, that plenty did—he used it to his advantage.

“OK, new joke,” he said after a gag on being pro-torture fell flat. “I appreciate the feedback.”

But for most of the night, Regan was shooting bullseyes, including observations on:

• Books: I’m not even trying to read a book. I’m trying to want to read a book.”
• Mansions: The only people who can use the word ‘mansion’ are people who don’t have one. Can you imagine someone saying, why don’t we get out of here and head back to my mansion?”
• Aging: Ever time you look in the mirror there’s a new surprise,” he said. “When things hurt now, you just assume it’s going to hurt forever.”
• Social anxiety: “I can’t even imagine talking to a whole room of people. Wow, I never realized how weird that sounds until just now.”

Social anxiety? It didn’t seem to bother him on Friday. And if it did, people were laughing too hard to notice.