Brian Regan brings his standup to PPAC Thursday.

Brian Friedman

It’s easier to explain what Brian Regan’s comedy isn’t than what it is. It isn’t self-consciously bizarre; it isn’t angry; it isn’t raving; it just plain funny in the old-school, post-vaudeville fashion. Fellow comedian Patton Oswalt wrote, “Brian Regan’s comedy stuns me … because he can start down the road with a premise that every comedian knows has not one scrap of flesh left on its bones, and find a new angle of attack that yields prime cuts of comedic meat.”

So his latest DVD, The Epitome of Hyperbole, is filled with jokes about subjects such as the dumbest crime, books that have the title at the top of every page, the mutually frustrating differences between men and women, and lying about high culture. And while the first thing you may notice if you attend his performance in Providence Thursday is Regan’s array of comic voices, silly walks and crazed faces, it doesn’t take long to spot his even-handed temperament, his affection for even his most clueless characters and an underlying intelligence: who makes jokes about books and opera in the first place?

A lot of the material on Epitome is about stupidity without being stupid. “Thanks,” Regan says over the phone before cracking, “some people don’t notice that part.

“I like to think that if someone pays attention to what I do, they’ll realize, he’s not quite as dumb as he’s saying that he is. And that’s sort of the point. It’s not really being stupid; it’s feeling that way sometimes. The joke is about how we feel sometimes, as opposed to how we really are. And I think most people go through their life trying to fit in and not really ruffle any feathers. But it’s hard to not feel inadequate at times.”

One of Regan’s claims to fame is that he works clean — no sexual humor, no R-rated language. The whole family can come to a Regan show, and while the kids may not get everything, they won’t hear anything their parents won’t want to explain.

This means he has a wide variety of fans of all ages, which he describes as gratifying, but “not something I try to achieve.” He started, as most comedians do, in adults-only bars and clubs, but his first recording, 1997’s Brian Regan Live CD, was heavy on material about looking back at childhood. “Little League baseball, feeling dumb in school, that sort of thing. And kids became fans of it. But that came as a shock to me. It was intended for adults reminiscing about their childhoods.…

“I have to be careful. I don’t want to paint myself into a corner, like Mr. Family Comedian. I still like to have things that have an edge or a point of view to them, that aren’t necessarily for 11-year-olds. Even though it’s something that might not offend them, it isn’t necessarily for them.”

So does he self-censor? Does he occasionally get a funny idea that he can’t use without blowing the persona?

“For the most part, I think in terms of jokes that don’t use language or sexual things; that’s kind of how I think. But occasionally I do have some dark and twisted thoughts that I think would be fun to do if I didn’t already have a certain thing going.… But I really like what I’m doing, and to me it’s a small price to pay to not do certain crazy thoughts.”

Regan’s a pure standup comedian — he has no sitcom or movie credits, which are usually like gold in the process of building a comedy career. He says it used to bother him, but not anymore. Early in his career, he opened for Jerry Seinfeld a few times in the kind of nice theaters he wanted to headline someday, “and I was like, ‘man! if you get a sitcom, you can play theaters!’ I was really excited about that quest. But in the meantime, I was building a following, and I was able to make that jump over to the theater venues. And now I think, you know what? This is all I ever wanted, anyway.

“I would still be interested in doing something, but it would have to be about the comedy. I have no interest whatsoever in the ego trip of being famous. I like my comedy, and if I could get into a show where we could capture it, I would be into that. But just to be in a role where they give you lines and say, ‘Here, memorize these,’ that doesn’t interest me.”

Seinfeld once famously said that the sources of observational humor can dry up with fame — once you’re a big-time comedian, he said, you don’t stand in line at the post office anymore. Regan says there is something to that, “but hopefully you just keep your eyes and ears open. There is plenty of stuff to goof on. But it’s a legitimate question. Sometimes I hope I don’t get so out of it that I forget what’s going on in the real world.”

Epitome came out last September, and Regan says he doesn’t have any more discs planned, but he’s “starting to get antsy” about recording again. “That, to me, is a fun way of moving on with material. You get an hour’s worth of stuff, and you lay it down on a DVD or CD, and then you can check it off. People can get that if they want, but now [I can do] different stuff.”

Brian Regan performs at the Providence Performing Arts Center, 220 Weybosset St., Providence, Thursday at 7:30. Tickets range from $32.50 to $39.50; call (401) 421-2787 or go to www.ppacri.org.

rmassimo@projo.com