It is when he becomes a storyteller that Jean-Thomas Jobin is most convincing. In his fourth show, presented in Montreal on Thursday evening at L’Olympia, his absurd humor does beautiful things when it is interwoven into stories. However, it is less conclusive when it becomes too scattered and unpredictable.
There is something very nice and engaging in Jean-Thomas Jobin’s proposal. His way of making people laugh with things that aren’t funny is effective. However, he handles the absurd in a way that doesn’t always catch on and sometimes leaves one perplexed.
The author of these lines is well aware that it is complex to decide on the effectiveness of an absurd number. The discomfort created can be the very purpose of a gag. We are often brought into contexts so unamusing that it’s funny. Jean-Thomas Jobin often sets foot in this territory. Easy jokes, even bad jokes, go down rather well with the public because that is exactly the goal: in his tone of voice, in his posture, in his way of delivering his punches, Jean-Thomas Jobin seeks to generate a certain discomfort, which ultimately makes you laugh.
The first part of his show is completely woven around unpredictability.
There is no common thread, which makes the transitions a bit cumbersome at times. The rhythm is not very engaging, even if the crowd at L’Olympia is receptive to the spontaneous leaps in the plot of the show. We understand the desire for a certain ridicule, but we don’t achieve it all the time. Sometimes we float in a limbo where it’s neither sensible nor really ridiculous and therefore not entirely funny. We smile often, we don’t laugh all the time.
From one subject to another
When the lights dim at L’Olympia, Jean-Thomas Jobin first improvises as a puppeteer. His doll, Minigo, a 7-year-old child with a very developed vocabulary, makes the introduction before the “real” arrival of the comedian. This is completely absurd and we are thus warned of what awaits us. He often jumps from rooster to donkey without us even having time to realize it, he suddenly starts dancing, he piles on childish jokes “to resist and fight against the cycle of life” and as an adult, he comes out with lame puns.
The use of accessories is not always clear: for example, we do not entirely understand why a dining table sits in the middle of the scene.
Thursday evening, to present for the first time its fourth one man show, his “first since the third”, Jean-Thomas Jobin had competition from the presence of P!nk at the Bell Centre. Grateful that we chose to find him at L’Olympia, he was generous, addressing all kinds of subjects.
When he talks about people, his personal encounters (with his hairdresser or his good friend Mike Ward, for example) or “random” users on Facebook, he becomes more captivating.
The storyteller
It is when he engages in the second segment of his show that Jean-Thomas Jobin finally captivates us. The snippets of his life that he tells us make us really want to laugh. The tone is much less choppy. He then drops the rigid side of his speech, which we may like or not, but which is necessarily less engaging.
The winner of the first version of Big Brother Celebrities looks back on the time he was asked to stop wearing his Claude Legault hats. He enjoys guessing how the flags of certain countries were invented. He recounts one of his dreams, when tennis player Rafael Nadal flirted with him on Facebook Messenger. It takes on a new (and very good) rhythm.
His observations about the world are interesting. We also appreciate the moments, scripted or not (this remains to be seen), where he addresses his audience to make comments. “That’s a pitying laugh, but at this point, I’m going to take it all,” he says at one point.
One of the show’s best moments comes when he addresses the deaths of both his parents, five months apart. He warns his audience that they shouldn’t feel bad for laughing at his jokes, which, yes, deal with death and grief, but which also helped him “vent” and navigate through all his grief. The funny moments of his father’s funeral and the process of his mother’s cremation are told with great skill (and emotion too).
One observation stands out at the end of this show: Jean-Thomas Jobin is highly likeable. And his one-man is too, although it is somewhat uneven.
Ten Strict Thirty Teas One
On tour in Quebec