Author and actor Fabien Cloutier invited the Montreal public to Club Soda on Tuesday and Wednesday to launch his new one-man show Délicat. An uneven, rough and raw show, but without surprise, delivered with an inventive and colorful language, of which he alone has the secret.
Club Soda was packed on Wednesday evening for the presentation of Délicat, a new offering by Fabien Cloutier, who favored the cabaret formula – more intimate and convivial – even if the noisy crowd was so compact that it was difficult to cross legs.
We realize in this brouhaha, the comedians are really the tennis players of the performing arts. Alone on the field, with their little racket, facing a roaring public. Filled with expectations. It takes courage.
And expectations, we had some, of course. The author and actor of the Léo series has himself set the bar quite high with his solo theater shows Scotstown and Cranbourne, in which he has revealed himself to be, through his character of the chum à Chabot, a storyteller of exception.
With his shows Assume and Prédictions, he continued his migration to the continent of humor with ups and downs, but certainly more roughness, while continuing to endorse the worst prejudices of society in order to better denounce them. With this finely coarse language capable of permanently planting images in our heads. For better and for worse.
Delicate is the continuation of this crossing. But the path is rocky. It will be about his touring life, his curiosity for craftsmen’s markets, his relationships with his neighbors, the smells that revolt him or his disgust with spas, these places of perdition “that scream the word vaginitis”. …
In each of these stories, his boorish and rude character, who is indignant for a yes, for a no, is never far away, but the jokes that punctuate his stories are sometimes simple, flush with daisies, sometimes questionable. Like this aside on the turnip, which he would like to taste after having expelled it, to see if it is better… Or on anorexia, beneficial when you consider the exorbitant cost of the grocery basket…
The public, which nevertheless brought together many friends and faithful, was suddenly less noisy…
A long segment of the show is reserved for climate change, which Fabien Cloutier – who sometimes screamed unnecessarily into his microphone – had fun ridiculing. The process is known, it’s a clever way to denounce environmental skeptics, but the gags of the type “we could grow bananas in Longueuil” are very predictable.
Numbers on fair trade, food self-sufficiency or gastrointestinal problems will quickly be forgotten.
That said, Fabien Cloutier did not make it to the big leagues by chance. He manages to hit the mark in epic tales described in great detail, where he broadly highlights our individualism, whether in the car or in our living room. With our 75-inch screen that allows us to “see 4K reports on poor countries”.
His account of a barefoot wedding in Bangladesh, with the bride appearing “under an arch of Croc sandals, spat out by the sea”, is worth its weight in gold. Ditto for his guilty pleasure for cashews, picked in difficult conditions by women who damage their hands by removing them from their toxic envelope.
Another powerful segment: the story of his friendships with people who lead harder lives than him, like this friend “single vegan, who does not like any girl, and who cooks with spelled flour”, a way of to compare, and to console. Until he realizes that he is probably himself the stooge of his new friends, thus closing the circle.
It is in these little sketches, which include a rather enjoyable Polaroid of life in a van (the van life) and a beautifully absurd story of a goat addicted to cannabis, that we find the genius of Fabien Cloutier, capable of hold up this cruel mirror, which sends us back an unflattering image, highlighting our cowardice. Of those moments, we would take more.
