Author and comedian Fabien Cloutier invited the Montreal public to Club Soda on Tuesday and Wednesday to launch his new one-man show Delicate. An uneven, rough and raw show, but without surprise, delivered with an inventive and colorful language, of which he alone has the secret.
Club Soda was packed Wednesday night for the presentation of Delicatea new offering from Fabien Cloutier, who favored the cabaret formula – more intimate and convivial – even if the noisy crowd was so compact that it was difficult to cross your legs.
We realize in this brouhaha, the comedians are really the tennis players of the performing arts. Alone on the field, with their little racket, facing a roaring public. Filled with expectations. It takes courage.
And expectations, we had some, of course. The author and actor of the series Leo has set the bar quite high himself with his solo theater performances scotstown And Cranbournein which he turned out to be, through his character as Chabot’s boyfriend, an exceptional storyteller.
With his shows Assume And Predictions, he continued his migration to the continent of humor with ups and downs, but certainly more roughness, while continuing to endorse the worst prejudices of society in order to better denounce them. With this finely coarse language capable of permanently planting images in our heads. For better and for worse.
Delicate is the continuation of this crossing. But the path is rocky.
It will be a question of his touring life, his curiosity for craftsmen’s markets, his relations with his neighbors, the smells that revolt him or his disgust with spas, these places of perdition “that shout the word vaginitis”. …
PHOTO DOMINICK GRAVEL, THE PRESS
Author, actor and humorist Fabien Cloutier
In each of these stories, his boorish and rude character, who is indignant for a yes, for a no, is never far away, but the jokes that punctuate his stories are sometimes simple, flush with daisies, sometimes dubious. Like this aside on the turnip, which he would like to taste after having expelled it, to see if it’s better… Or on anorexia, beneficial when you consider the exorbitant cost of the grocery basket…
The public, which nevertheless brought together many friends and faithful, was suddenly less noisy…
cruel mirror
A long segment of the show is reserved for climate change, which Fabien Cloutier – who sometimes screamed unnecessarily into his microphone – had fun ridiculing. The process is well known, it’s a clever way of denouncing environmental skeptics, but the gags such as “we could grow bananas in Longueuil” are very predictable.
Issues on fair trade, food self-sufficiency or gastrointestinal problems will quickly be forgotten.
That said, Fabien Cloutier did not make it to the big leagues by chance.
He manages to hit the mark in epic tales described in great detail, where he broadly highlights our individualism, whether in the car or in our living room. With our 75-inch screen that allows us to “see 4K reports on poor countries”.
His account of a barefoot wedding in Bangladesh, with the bride appearing “under an arch of Crocs sandals, spat out by the sea”, is worth its weight in gold. Ditto for his guilty pleasure for cashews (cashews), picked under difficult conditions by women who damage their hands by removing them from their toxic envelope.
Another promising segment: the story of his friendships with people who lead harder lives than him, such as this friend “single vegan, who does not like any girl, and who cooks with spelled flour”, a way of to compare, and to console. Until he realizes that he is probably himself the stooge of his new friends, thus closing the loop.
It is in these little sketches, which include a rather enjoyable Polaroid of life in van (there van life) and a beautifully absurd story of a goat addicted to cannabis, which we find the genius of Fabien Cloutier, capable of holding up this cruel mirror to us, which sends us back an unflattering image, highlighting our cowardice. Of those moments, we would take more.
Delicate
On tour in Quebec