It is on a stage soberly decorated with two narrow light curtains, but where human-sized metal rods sit, topped with wigs and various headgear, that Daniel Lemire welcomes his audience. These accessories, placed in a semi-circle like a sleeping circle waiting only for the familiar sound of applause to come back to life, announce what the evening will be made of, namely the renewal of the veteran comedian’s classics.
For his return to the stage, eight years after his last solo show (100% Lemire) and five years after the one presented in duo with his accomplice Pierre Verville (Lemire Verville), the comedian knew how to stay away from a sensational remodeling of his comedic methods and remain completely true to himself. Sneering phlegm, sarcastic overview of current events, scenes featuring different characters, puns galore: the public is served a tried and beautifully executed menu. We would nevertheless enjoy it with more appetite if it did not give off a slight scent of déjà vu.
This is because this eponymous solo show is, unfortunately!, not entirely made up of unpublished texts. It is, on the contrary, peppered with borrowings from 100% Lemireas immortalized on DVD, and to the collection of jokes and comic skits Textual harassment, published in 2013 by Hurtubise. These iterations range from simple jokes (the members of the Rolling Stones are so old that a team of taxidermists would follow them on tour, for example) to a number about road rage repeated almost exactly as an encore, by the way with a few lines on breast implants injected with explosives used as weapons of terrorism.
Characters in the spirit of the times
These repetitions appear all the more distressing as the original content of the show turns out to be frankly delightful. First, Lemire, supported in the artistic direction by his sidekick Denis Bouchard, has lost absolutely nothing of his ability to extract the absurd from the world around him. This is demonstrated, in particular, by his outbursts on the rise of the right in the United States, on the trial of the police officers in office during the attack committed against Pauline Marois and on the trafficking of exotic animals.
Then, he very skillfully knew how to breathe new life into characters who have accumulated decades of mileage. Yvon Travaillé, a right-wing figure with an obtuse mind, tackles the labor shortage by proposing different solutions, all of them far-fetched it goes without saying, such as granting more attractive titles to jobs that are often disdained. . Thus, an individual hired to clean toilets would be designated as “chief of staff”.
In addition, the eternal hippie Ronnie took advantage of confinement to learn how to make craft beer; Maurice, made famous by the sketch where he dined at a restaurant six hours after quitting smoking, certainly knew how to calm his extreme agitation, but, still execrable, finds himself forced to follow therapy to learn how to manage his anger; the indescribable Uncle Georges, for his part, begins a career as an influencer, which gives rise to a tasty satire of this field of activity.
Thus, to celebrate his 40 years in the business, Daniel Lemire is banking on what has made his success: a humor free from confidences and intimate subjects as well as from swearing and outbursts, which smacks of elegance without elitism, where abound amusing puns and where even the ribald or scatological connotations never cross the boundaries of what one could call good taste. Born in another era, this approach paradoxically proves refreshing at the heart of the current comedy scene. Rather than being out of step with it, Lemir’s proposal enriches it with a cultivar with an old-fashioned charm that we cannot fail to appreciate at its fair value.