The day when Guillaume Pineault parks, in tears, in front of his parents’ house to tell them that his love affair of twelve years is over, his father drags him into the yard, in front of a tree. The son was hoping for a “metaphor à la Fred Pellerin”, but no. His father relied on the good old strategy of diversion. Talk to him about something else—in this case a birdhouse—to distract him from his sadness.
Posted at 10:23 a.m.
Diversion: here is a strategy that provides its soothing effects for a while, but around which it is unenlightened to build one’s life, at the risk of missing out on it. In Detourhis first show that he finally offered Tuesday evening at the Gésù after two postponements linked to the pandemic, the 38-year-old comedian takes stock of all the times he has been diverted from his route by the ill-advised advice of an orienteer, by his inclination to follow others without thinking or by his own fear of listening to himself.
If the majority of the first comic solos take the form of a biographical journey during which a newcomer recounts everything that preceded the great moment of his appearance in the spotlight (childhood, studies, love), Detour further highlights the mise en abyme, to the point where the evening sometimes resembles a prom to which we would have been invited to celebrate the official admission of Guillaume Pineault into the wonderful world of humor, the ultimate objective of his quest.
A graduate in occupational therapy and osteopathy, the endearing Maskoutain of origin knew, however, since high school that he wanted to earn a living by making people laugh: here he is in front of us, accomplishing exactly that. And the “little guy all mixed up” that he describes has obviously managed to find his way: even before presenting his hour and a half of jokes in front of colleagues and the media, he had already sold 25,000 tickets for this show that he has been showing for several months all over Quebec.
PHOTO FRANÇOIS ROY, THE PRESS
Guillaume Pineault, on the Gésù stage, Tuesday.
king of his own life
At the heart of a humorous ecosystem where friendly white thirtysomethings practicing a humor halfway between the American tradition of stand up and the more Québécois part of the disheveled story told in a friendly tone, Guillaume Pineault faced the immense challenge of identifying his own color. Like a Sam Breton, his good nature is one of his main assets. His stage character is always more believable when he dares to be sensitive, than when he exaggerates wickedness – the last passage of the show, in which Pineault torments kids, swears a little with the rest.
The comedian is therefore one of those with whom it is good to spend time, which counts for a lot. His texts have as main springs the amusing familiarity of the portrait he depicts. His father sickly avoiding conflict? We already know it — it’s perhaps a little ours — and we love it straight away. His mother, who would move seas and worlds for her children, but who sometimes utters absurd phrases? We already know it — it’s perhaps a little ours — and we love it straight away.
Catastrophic trip, shoddy move, intimate encounter that is both catastrophic and shoddy; Detour lines up the anecdotes at a steady pace and with irreproachable efficiency testifying to the decade of experience that Guillaume Pineault claims. Faced with subjects that would have allowed him to dig deeper – his tumultuous relationship with alcohol, the loneliness of celibacy – he nevertheless prefers to stay on the surface, rather than risk lowering his gag machine gun.
His discourse on male pressure to multiply sexual conquests, as well as the snub he reserves for guys who blame their erectile difficulties on women (“It’s never the girls’ fault”), testify, however, to a palpable sense of responsibility in someone who generally remains the turkey of his own joke (rather than ridiculing the women around him, a widespread reflex among his colleagues).
Behind its lightness, Detour hides a salutary message, in that it bears witness to the perverse effects of conformism, which leads so many people down paths that make them unhappy. At the end of his high school, Guillaume Pineault had been elected prom king, he had even listed it on his curriculum vitae. After a thousand and one bifurcations, he is today the king of his own life.
Detour is presented on tour throughout Quebec.