Montreal premiere night Wednesday evening at the Olympia. Dominic Paquet reunited with his friends and an audience won over in advance to launch his fourth one man show entitled Let me go. A show that highlights all the qualities – especially vocal – of the comedian, but also his shortcomings.
Graduated from the National School of Humor in 1998, Dominic Paquet has become over the years a real driver of the Quebec humor scene. It is everywhere: shows, animation of galas, appearances on television and on the radio. In short, the man rolls his bump superbly, and this, without ever straying too far from what makes his success: the rapid punch and his ability to create characters with the sole strength of his voice.
This raw talent is also showcased in Let me go. Dominic Paquet multiplies the voice effects to give birth to a host of zany characters, from the snobbish coffee drinker to the incomprehensible GO of a hotel complex in the South.
PHOTO SARAH MONGEAU-BIRKETT, THE PRESS
Dominic Paquet string together jokes in the style of American comedians.
In a second, he knows how to transform himself without any other artifice than his vocal cords and a few well-measured mimics. Impressive.
He also masters with great aplomb the art of creating (small) discomforts and that of launching into well-felt delusions on subjects that could not be more trivial. In this regard, his gags on the invention of the bending straw – and especially on the loathsome straight straw – hit the mark. His personification of a man exhausted to find himself with a straw in his nose with every sip is a stroke of genius. Another number that hits the mark: the one on a couple ready to travel 150 km to buy a $ 4 tablecloth on Marketplace…
From one subject to another
In short, Dominic Paquet knows how to take little things out of life to make it a laughing matter. The catch is that it rarely goes much further than this string of little things. With his American style, the 46-year-old comedian prefers to go from cock to ass to chain jokes rather than create universes with a minimum of substance. Very good, but still it is necessary to choose subjects which have not been rehashed a thousand times. Do we still need gags on celibacy (or married life), anger, shopping?
And when the joke is a series of coronations or even that it ends with too easy a “Your eyes », One wonders if it would not have been possible to dig a little deeper into the comic soil.
In fact, the show opens with a gag about a guy who watches TV with his hand in his panties and ends with a poop joke. Between the two, there are better (thank God!), But Dominic Paquet does not offer much to expand his fan base with this new show.
Those already conquered will love it, because the pace is sustained, the gags are numerous and the comedian’s energy is contagious. The others, however, risk finding a little tasteless this humor sometimes flush with the daisies, which praises the “ordinary” guy (as Charlebois would say), too busy sleeping on the sofa to really evolve.
Let me go
On tour until September 2022
Visit the comedian’s website