“Together we are beautiful, alone we are disgusting”, repeats Jo Cormier in Animala wild, extravagant and often very funny ode to the collective power of our vulnerabilities, which breaks with the imposed figures of the first comedy show.
Posted at 12:34 p.m.
Nothing better describes the small step aside that Jo Cormier takes in relation to the tradition of stand up that the beginning ofAnimal, his first show which he presented to the media on Tuesday evening. Rather than making fun of the lucky people sitting in the front row, as his colleagues often like to do, the comedian with little tamed hair chooses to compliment them on their clothes, an opportunity allowing him to rejoice that this animal that t is the human being dressed up when he knows that he will find himself in the presence of his fellows.
“Human Museum” indicated a gigantic poster enthroned at the entrance to the Olympia and pointing towards the floor. Clear message: it is the social beast that is the human that the 33-year-old guy studies in this 90 minutes of scene, which begins with the sound of a fabulous rereading of the song Animal interpreted by France D’Amour in the manner of Iron Maiden.
Our relationship to our pets, our smart phones, sports, toilets, sexuality; Jo Cormier delves into each of these themes, each time employing a similar strategy which consists of first naming what humans have to be proud of, before highlighting the extent to which this same human is perhaps not be as superior to other creatures as he makes himself believe.
PHOTO FRANÇOIS ROY, THE PRESS
Jo Cormier is a severe critic of consumerism which insinuates itself into all the interstices of everyday life.
The human being likes to sell to the point of having invented marketing courses, as well to say courses allowing to learn “to cross his congeners”, he laments in one of the few passages which borrow from a social humor more incisive. It is that, under his costume of “Passe-Partout on the mush », Jo Cormier is a severe critic of the consumerism that insinuates itself into all the interstices of everyday life. Also critical of stardom.
Tirades of an unmistakable mockery on Marc Dupré’s vodka and Peter MacLeod’s pizza provide Animal some of his most audacious lines, and the most enjoyable, comedians being rare to dare to criticize colleagues who turn into merchants.
A big heart
“It’s normal to play in the holes”, launches Jo Cormier in an issue during which he is surprised by the shame that his biological functions generate in humans. If the subject of the faecal thing is explored by many humorists, the beautiful animal manages to renew it by taking an interest in it in an almost scientific way, that is to say by popularizing the Bristol scale (you will google).
Although he often expresses himself with the proselytizing fervor of a guru, Jo Cormier nevertheless delivers a message of self-acceptance and love for his neighbour, perfectly in tune with his hallucinated Jesus look. The pleasure of orgasm, the joy of a game of hockey with friends and the chance of being able to defecate in drinking water are all, according to him, privileges that human beings waste by not doing so. not realizing or abusing it.
A digression on Guy Nantel’s race for the leadership of the Parti Québécois clashes with the tone of the whole, however, because it brings us back too radically to a here-and-now, while the rest of the show is part of a kind of intuitive and timeless anthropology. Another segment in which Cormier imagines himself giving a course on consent to boys, despite his good intentions, seems unnecessarily outrageous, and borders more on unease than laughter.
At the heart of a comic scene where the recruits of humor employ in the majority of cases their first show to present themselves, Animal therefore stands out by talking about what is intimate about the collective and by relying on the whole not so much on anecdotes, but rather on wacky parallels and an impressive talent for portraying a character in a single inflection. Jo Cormier is also particularly gifted so that each of his numbers bears the imprint of his humanism, even if he doesn’t feel the need to highlight the emotion too much.
Excessive, wacky, imaginative; Jo Cormier embraces the creativity of absurd humour, albeit without the distance between artist and audience that this genre sometimes creates. It will not be surprising that If we got down to itthe revival of Jean-Pierre Ferland by Hubert Lenoir, resounds at the end of the curtain, Jo Cormier being no doubt also of the opinion that we will gain “by preaching through beauty”, a plea whose importance should not be underestimated. subversive content.
All that remains is to beg him never to become docile.
Animal by Jo Cormier
On tour everywhere in Quebec