For his fifth one-man show, comedian Laurent Paquin chose to explore the theme of happiness which does not come easily to him. His grumpy, grumpy, pessimistic and drooling character hit the mark Tuesday evening at the Olympia Theater, ten months after the start of his Quebec tour.
We must render to Caesar what is Caesar’s. Laurent Paquin delivers his stories with aplomb and precision.
His sense of timing, his flow, his calm confidence and his ability to improvise around his favorite themes make him a solid comedian. Distracted Crocodile, whose title is taken from a joke he told at the age of 5, this time avoids kid jokes, of which the comedian sometimes has the secret. We thank him for that.
Built around this happiness that he often pursues without success, this new one-man show has the quality of going in several directions while remaining anchored – until the end – to this theme of slippery happiness. For almost an hour and a half, Laurent Paquin will try to unravel the secret of happy people… with all the bad faith in the world.
Denouncing the good feelings that we express (consciously or not) to find improvement in the distressing world around us, the character of Laurent Paquin instead takes refuge in negative thoughts. He’s stronger than him… But he will try to change his mind in front of us.
His starting point? Since he was the age his father was when he died, the comedian tells himself that his end is approaching… No more time to waste, therefore. It’s time to be happy, to do what you’ve always dreamed of doing, to live in the present moment and to stop “being stubborn about thick things”.
“We can laugh at the thick,” he says after a long preamble, “because they have never been a minority…” And boom! Laurent Paquin’s humor can be cutting.
In one of the punchiest segments of his show, Laurent Paquin attacks the “myth” of happiness found in nature. He comes to wonder if the animals are happy. “You have to be afraid to survive,” he concludes, describing the squirrels’ “paranoid” behavior. “The animals are not happy. »
Another strong moment of Distracted Crocodile: the comedian’s fed up with the sayings, proverbs or “ready-made phrases” that he enjoys debunking.
“Take the example of the phrase: live each day as if it were your last,” says Laurent Paquin. If I knew it was my last day on earth, I would call all my relatives and friends crying… (I paraphrase). But if I did this again every day, they will definitely wish it was my last day on earth! »
His passage on the present moment is of the same caliber. His attempt to isolate the present time (which continues to escape us) gives rise to a funny monologue where, among other things, it is a question of the gap between what we see and what we experience – here he uses the metaphor rays of the sun which take seven minutes to reach us…
Don’t expect political comments here, Laurent Paquin – who could lower his voice by an octave to be less shrill – uses observational comedy and has fun detecting the contradictions of our daily lives. And even if certain themes have been exploited ad nauseam, the comedian’s delivery is effective.
Stubborn, he will defend the small habits that give him a certain happiness while pleading for our necessary evolution. He will notably attack the book by Pierre-Yves McSween, Do you really need it?. “If I want to buy a glow-in-the-dark potato peeler just to see my brother-in-law’s reaction, if it makes me happy, even if I don’t need it, I’m going to do it! »
After having demonstrated all his bad faith, Laurent Paquin will reveal to us all these little things that make him happy, concluding that “it’s what you do with what you have that will make you happy”.
We will not persist with him.
