While it might be cliché to say you didn’t know what to expect walking into a show, for me that was absolutely the case with Adam Conover’s Mind Parasites Live, currently playing in the Just for Laughs festival as part of OFF-JFL.
Was this going to be a live version of Adam Ruins Everything, the truTV show/series of videos Conover hosts, or were we in for a standup set? Turns out it was a little from Column A, a little from Column B, with some Column P, for parasites, thrown into the mix.
I’m talking parasites of the insect world on the screen behind Conover in all their nature documentary glory (good thing this wasn’t dinner theatre). He used a different one to jump into each of his three main themes: advertising, alcohol and the Internet.
His analogies worked, and made quite a bit of sense, in particular the one about the ant on the blade of grass. The tech, which amounted to Conover controlling the various slides and videos we saw on the screen with his phone, worked too, flawlessly.
As someone who has personally experienced casting to a TV from a phone and is left waiting, the seamless transition was impressive. I also liked how, unlike other comedians with multimedia elements to their shows, Conover didn’t have to rely on someone else to change the visuals.
This was a show with good tech and quite a bit of thought behind it that really succeeded in driving it’s points home, but was it also funny? Absolutely.
No, it wasn’t joke-a-minute standup, but Conover’s mix of information, analysis and personal anecdotes was the kind of comedy you could both laugh at and really think about. If the standing ovation at the end of Monday night’s show was any indication, Montreal audiences really get where Adam Conover is coming from and what he has to say.
Adam Ruins Everything presents Mind Parasites Live with Adam Conover runs through July 27th as part of OFF-JFL. Tickets available through hahaha.com.
