With Livethe comedian casts his hilarious gaze on a vast panoply of subjects.
Simon Gouache’s third show in six years, Live strongly resembles the two solos that preceded it. We find the tone, the look, the presence, but above all the singular gaze of a man with a lively mind, endowed with a formidable sense of observation, who wonders in a hilarious way about his daily life and about that of his contemporaries.
What’s different this time around is the breadth of territory the 38-year-old comedian explores, the way his concerns, no matter how wacky, are constantly colored by his recent role as a father. There is a new density, an unprecedented maturity. Indeed, written in the midst of a pandemic, over a long period, decisive years during which the comedian saw the birth of his two daughters, now aged two years and four months, the show revolves around the notion of time.
While devoting himself to a prodigious cock-a-donkey, tackling a multitude of subjects in the greatest anarchy, Gouache expresses his nostalgia for the past, his anxieties in the face of the present and his excessive hopes with regard to in the future. He brilliantly interweaves the memories of a bygone childhood, the very current worries of a father on the lookout and the dreams of a future with revolutionary technologies. Those who liked Phil Roy’s most recent show will not be disappointed.
From the outset, the comedian born and raised in Montreal makes a confession: he now lives in the suburbs! Cheerfully giving in to self-mockery, and even self-deprecation, Gouache does not hesitate to highlight his cowardice, his weakness and his incompetence, especially with regard to manual work. While his neighbor is an expert in everything from foundations to roofing to electricity, our hero has nothing to offer in return other than his knowledge of 2000s wrestlers, Ninja Turtles or from Mario Bros.
The end on the show Hi hello, which Gouache listened to for the first time thanks to his new rhythm of life, is a real tour de force where mime and facial expressions occupy a fundamental place. Equally breathtaking is the portion about the debates in the National Assembly, or the one about the devouring passion of Quebecers for dairy calcium and raisins in the 1980s and 1990s.
You will have understood that Simon Gouache is not reinventing the wheel. His stand-up is part of a classic register, eminently North American, a very frequented path. He does not give into the absurd, nor into the strange, does not seek to question inequalities, any more than to overthrow the established order. He even happens, on rare occasions, to flirt with commonplaces, especially with regard to sexual roles.
That said, in his playground, a type of humor based on a great flexibility of execution and a tasty sense of observation, he touches on excellence. When he hits the bull’s eye by using extra finesse, as when he tackles genius, much less widespread than one might think, we have the impression of seeing the comedian he could well become, the he is one of those who put their undeniable talent at the service of an enlightening dissection of social issues.