Review of Modeste | Mike Ward plays his big hits

Mike Ward recalls why he deserves his title as Celine Dion of phallic jokes in Modesta show that lives up to its title.

Mike Ward is “really looking forward”, he quips, to the next scandal that will fall on him. This is because Mike Ward already knows that he will be able to claim that the umpteenth joke of dubious taste that he makes comes from artificial intelligence and plead that it is not he who uttered these monstrosities, that rather, they are the result of hyperfaking.

This will be one of the rare allusions to his legal setbacks Modest, Mike Ward having clearly turned the page on this long chapter of his public life. In any case, he had pretty much cleared the subject with Black, his previous show, in which he raged against the Human Rights Tribunal. Mike Ward was angry and an angry Mike Ward is always a fearsome Mike Ward.

In this sixth one-man show, the media premiere of which was held Thursday evening at Club Soda, the man in black returns to a more good-natured tone, but for informed adults, in a series of numbers which resemble this album that ‘a rock band always ends up recording after 25 years of career, on which they present new songs very reminiscent of those which made them famous. With all the pleasure and all the limits that such an exercise supposes.

Mike Ward is in fashion greatest hits from his account of his recent separation, precipitated by a major depression, which will take him from an erotic toy store to the office of a urologist. In order to treat his erectile problems, he will be prescribed “electric shocks on the penis”, a formula that the comedian likes to pronounce and re-pronounce, because in his mouth, it becomes a nugget of poetry .

Mike Ward once called himself the “Celine Dion of seed jokes” and he lives up to that title in the first half of his show. After confiding his affection for homeless people, just when he was about to pour out good feelings, the veteran breaks into one of the most explicit tirades of his career, with the smile of one on his face. who takes pleasure in proving that he has lost nothing of what his legend was built on.

A popular hero

Mike Ward’s style is based on two main tones: that of vulgarity for vulgarity’s sake, which defines most of his jokes of a sexual nature, and that of black humor, thanks to which he throws back in our faces what we prefer generally turn a deaf ear. His description of his trip to China oscillates between the two, but contains some of the most powerful lines of the evening, when he likens the sound of the many Chinese workers committing suicide to a kind of white noise that the tourist can easily ignore.

The last third of Modest finally sheds light on the reason why the show is titled like this: born in a less fortunate environment, Mike Ward is today a rather wealthy fifty-year-old who likes to “spend like an innocent on stupid things”. Example ? The time he sponsored the career of his friend, the fighter Olivier Aubin-Mercier, by putting a schoolboy photo on his jersey.

The chronicle of his journey between boyfriends in Atlanta to attend a mixed martial arts gala would exude braggadocio from any other comedian’s mouth, but thanks to his popular podcast series Listening, and because of his trial, Mike Ward became this popular hero whose success, rather than annoying his audience, delighted him. Its success is a bit theirs.

“I should not have broken through with the humor that I do,” he will say in conclusion, about the little chance of experiencing glory that he faced at the start of his career, given his refusal to police his language for TV.

In this sense, Mike Ward remains one of the rare Quebec comedians to handle crudeness with such finesse. We can never say enough how much of a miracle it is that at the end of his trial, he did not become a supporter of those according to whom “we can no longer say anything”. It is possible not to give in to the sirens of political correctness without making invective one’s personal policy, the veteran now seems well aware of this.

“What I’m looking for is to live moments,” he confided about his way of looking at life in a touching testimony of gratitude to his faithful. “I didn’t think I would last this long. » Modest is a show that lives up to its title, because it is undoubtedly modest in its ambitions, but after everything it has been through, that Mike Ward is still standing is already a lot.

Modest

On tour throughout Quebec

7/10