Gig review by Steve Bennett at Just For Laughs, Montreal

He fronts one of the most political comedy shows on TV, but when it comes to Canadian affairs, the Daily Show’s Trevor Noah largely concerns himself with just how cool and buff Justin Trudeau is.

Yet his acting out of the Premier on his recent trip to India, Bollywood-style dancing at all, easily wins over the Montreal crowd, as does his recognition of their Francophone ways… even if the line about understanding French only until the other person starts speaking back is a little obvious. Yet it opens up, perhaps improbably, into a delightful chunk about Chinatown.

Noah is the epitome of cool poise himself, but becomes animated to illustrate a point. His take on the dumbass witnesses local news reports tend to choose is a delight. He wins applause, too, for his impersonation of Donald Trump, which conceals some jabs at the president, few but effective.

Later in the gala bill we will see  Anthony Atamanuik absolutely inhabit POTUS, as he does on Comedy Central’s The President Show, with every mannerism spot-on, hardly exaggerated at all. He gets some low-hanging laughs from jokes about approval ratings, and rechristens Trudeau as ‘LIE-deau’, just the sort of lame wordplay he’d engage in.

But just when you think you have the measure of this as a simple impersonation, Atamanuik reveals some bleak political soothsaying, outlining some terrifyingly credible futures for America and making points far more serious than much so-called political satire.   It’s hard-hitting stuff.

However if anyone ‘won’ the gala –  if stand-up can be thought of as a competitive sport, it was Just For Laughs stalwart Jim Norton – making comic capital about his lack of charm and confidence offstage, even if he’s not short of the latter on it. He revels in recounting dating exchanges that sound creepy, and isn’t shy of going grubby in his material, but nails it with frankness.

Elsewhere on the bill, Baron Vaughn discussed the ‘casual apocalypse’ under Trump, but most significantly told pointed and poignant jokes about being reunited with his dad who abandoned him as a child, as he had done at the Alternative Show earlier. Addressing his mixed emotions makes for comedy that’s as fascinating as it is funny.

Michelle Buteau offers some pedestrian ‘XXX has let herself go’ material about what she looked like, though the precision of her reference points gives it some extra oomph, before speaking about her petty squabbles.  

Similarly, Toronto’s Aisha Alfa didn’t start promisingly by calling Trump ‘America’s first orange president’ - a hack line that nonetheless went down well. Later she’d swing the mic like a penis to illustrate how well-hung black men are, cheapening a routine about race that promised more. Her description of male strip troupe Thunder From Down Under offered a better class of dick joke, though,

 Angelo Lozada had a rough-edged elegance with his storytelling set that drew the audience in with anecdotes about his colonoscopy – which he thought was ‘awesome’ in defiance of the expected – and a sly comparison with his up bringing in the ghetto to his eloquence today.  For he certainly does have a way with words.

Review date: 29 Jul 2018
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett