Review of Time to Time | Julien Lacroix blows hot and cold

In Time to timewhose media premiere took place Thursday evening at the Studio-Cabaret de l’Espace St-Denis, Julien Lacroix seems to want to say something, but never gets to the end of his thoughts.

Julien Lacroix is ​​not yet on stage, but his voice is heard as he discusses with his son, who inquires about the reasons why his father was “canceled”, as a friend taught him.

It’s because he wasn’t always “a gentleman”, explains the dad in as euphemistic a way as possible. In July 2020, nine women told Duty“this student newspaper which went bankrupt”, he said, having been victims of sexual assault or misconduct on the part of the comedian.

Address the subject head on

Back with a second show, the first since the publication of this article which caused a shock wave in the world of humor, the 31-year-old guy takes the challenge of not only tackling the subject head-on, but of building the majority of his issues revolve around the impact that this journalistic investigation had on his life.

If he has evolved as a human, by stopping drinking and becoming a father, Julien Lacroix has not changed his character, who remains this man-child speaking in the tone of a kid prey to an attack of saccharine the most inelegant remarks.

In any case, he comes back to it very quickly, after a brief, promising segment, during which he makes fun of the oddballs who defended him too vehemently on social networks.

His main comic device still consists of saying something absurd or more or less transgressive – such as listing the first names of his brothers and slipping a feminine first name into the list –, welcoming the laughter generated by this incongruity, then to interrupt for a moment, offering the audience a stunned face.

And even if we are willing to agree, as he repeats several times, that a man can commit serious errors without being a “monster”, second-degree crassness is a privilege reserved for artists of which we can legitimately presume of irreproachability. Deep throat jokes, masturbation jokes, or a passage about 2 Girls 1 Cupthis scatopornographic video dating from 2007, borders on discomfort.

We will also have to explain to us what is funny about the idea of ​​comparing a quadriplegic person to a pancake, a line that Mehdi Bousaidan also uses, almost word for word, in his most recent show.

From his stay at Maison Jean Lapointe to the prospect of one day having to explain what he experienced to his son, there was nevertheless reason to be vulnerable. But Julien Lacroix refuses to delve into himself and prefers to turn his gaze outwards.

Have it on your heart

This whole show also suffers from a palpable lack of finish, perhaps caused by the absence of an outside perspective, the comedian having had to put it together alone. The transitions between funny moments and brief reflective interludes prove particularly laborious. Only his charisma and his sense of repartee allowed him to avoid disaster, even if on Thursday evening, at the Studio-Cabaret de l’Espace St-Denis, his nervousness was felt.

In a letter addressed to his son, a worn-out process to which he relies just before the curtain falls, Julien Lacroix blows hot and cold: the 2020 denunciation movement was necessary, he first asserts . He himself had “exceeded the limits”, he said, before inviting his child to be wary of a society which would sink into “moral panic”.

The greatest mourning he will have had to do is not that of his career, he adds, but that of a “semblance of justice”, assertions heavy with innuendo, but that he is difficult to comment, because he won’t say more. The show ends just a few seconds later with the sound of The Show Must Go Ona Queen song written by Brian May to celebrate the courage of his friend Freddie Mercury in the face of AIDS.

Julien Lacroix seems to have something on his heart, at least that is what his astonishing arrows shot at the Duty and to the comedian Rosalie Vaillancourt. This is also what this segment suggests, during which he expresses regret that all the ostracized artists have been placed in one and the same basket, that their disgrace has been caused by journalistic investigations, anonymous testimonies on social media or a visit to the courts.

But he will never follow through with his thoughts, as if he knew full well that it would be taking too big a risk.

The contract between a comedian and his audience is based on that audience’s faith that the comedian is telling the truth, or at least a truth. Not necessarily a factual truth, just his own truth, that of his heart. But Julien Lacroix never gives us access to his truth.

Time to time

On tour throughout Quebec

4/10