So, after a brief 48 hours in Kingston, I hopped on a bus to Montreal for yet more comedy. After finding my (quite nice, but unairconditioned) hostel and deciding what to wear so I wouldn’t be a sweaty mess all night, I headed off to my first show.
Donald Glover – Gross!
I didn’t know much about Donald Glover before this show, I’d only heard him on one of the podcasts I listen to, Citizen Radio. But after Phil Nichol cancelled his show, I decided I’d go along. I was slightly tentative because I’m not a massive fan of gross-out comedy, but I arrived an hour early and got myself a front row seat anyway. Donald Glover was excellent! His show wasn’t unnecessarily graphic or unpleasant, it was very funny. He talked about his foster family, his friends and girlfriends. There was one especially good story about one of his new foster brothers taking a shit in a toilet at a hardware store. The story was more about peoples’ reactions than a gross-out tale, which is why it was so good. I’d definitely see Donald again, it was a solid hour of comedy.
Noel Fielding
I’m glad I left Donald’s show so quickly, because, even 55 minutes in advance, there were already people queueing for Noel Fielding’s show. Soon after I arrived the queue stretched quite far down the street. I met some people who had been sitting right behind me in Donald Glover’s show, and another girl who was a massive fan of Noel’s. We all sat at a front row table and had a comedy nerd chat. Then Noel came on. His hair was (thankfully) black again, he was wearing a smock covered in multicoloured frogs, and his signature silver boots. His set was pretty much exactly what I’d expect from Noel; lots of strange, whimsical abstract pieces and a fair amount of improvising. I really can’t describe much of it. He did have a 5 minute story about a blue-bottle where he discovered that we call them house flies here. I enjoyed Noel’s show, but his style doesn’t get big laughs like well-honed jokes, it gets lots of titters and confused looks sometimes. Still, it was well worth it. I was going to wait around after the show to see if he was signing/doing photos, but by that point it was midnight, I hadn’t really eaten supper yet and there was no discernable stage door. So instead of waiting around getting progressively grumpier, I grabbed a sandwich at Subway and walked home. I’d still quite like to meet Noel, but I have a feeling that his fame and obsessive fans might make him pretty guarded.
So that’s day 1 of 4 in Montreal. Tonight I’m seeing the Irish comedy show (tactlessly called O’Comics, compered by PJ Gallagher, featuring Andrew Maxwell and Des BIshop) and Harland Williams (a Canadian comedian, who happens to be my brother’s favourite). I’ll blog about that tomorrow. It should be excellent!
No comments:
Post a Comment