I had always wondered what Lewis Black was like when he wasn’t intensely scream/talking a rant as I had seen him do on The Daily Show countless times. Last night, I found out.
Of course Black delivered the intensity I had come to expect from his Back in Black segments, but you can’t keep that level of face contorting perma-rant up for over an hour. With no Jon to throw back to, we got to see Lewis Black, the reasonable man.
This Lewis Black was funny, sarcastic (as you might expect) and quite the storyteller. We heard about his trip to Europe, his colonoscopy and his love of Tahiti among other things all with dry wit interspersed with political observations.
He riffed on the Republicans, climate change deniers, Vladamir Putin and, for a bit of local flare, the never changing state of bridges in Montreal. No, there wasn’t a Coderre reference, though he did bring up Rob Ford. It was funny, though it did feel a bit too safe, a word I wouldn’t usually associate with Black.
At times it almost felt like I was watching him talk about the other Lewis Black that I had come to know in bits on TV. It was a more reflective Black than I was expecting, but that was cool. We got to know him a bit as a person and it seemed, at times, rather intimate, which is interesting considering this was at Place des Arts in front of a rather large crowd and I was sitting in the balcony.
He was much less the wildman and much more Lewis Black, the reasonable ranter.
* Lewis Black performs The Rant is Due tonight at 7pm @ Theatre Maisonneuve in Place des Arts, tickets: hahaha.com
He will also be a part of the Mega Stars of Comedy Gala Friday July 25th, 10pm @ Salle Wilfred Pelletier in Place des Arts, tickets hahaha.com
