When the line-up for Toronto’s Just For Laughs Festival 42 was announced, an unlikely jokester stood out from the regular throng of comics: David Suzuki. Yes, that David Suzuki. Almost immediately, buzz about the environmentalist’s show grew faster than a fruit fly (more about those later). Would he crack jokes on carbon footprints? Would he chaff on climate change? Anticipation started to mount.
So, when the afternoon of the sole Suzuki show arrived, and Monkey Toast host Ron Tite came onstage and asked the packed house at The Second City, “Who here thought David Suzuki would do 45 minutes of stand-up?” the common response was: everyone.
Alas, Suzuki standing in front of a microphone a la Seinfeld and griping about the environment “(So, what’s the deal with global warming?”) would never come to be. Instead, Tite informed us, he would be asking Suzuki about his life, while the other members of the Monkey Toast improv troupe would sit idly by, absorbing Suzuki’s condensed bio before improvising his life story in 10-minute increments. Basically, it was a Monkey Toast show with Suzuki as their special guest. Of course, the show wasn’t billed as such.
The Monkey Toast players (Lisa Merchant, Jan Caruana, Paul Bates, Kerry Griffin, Herbie Barnes and Aurora Browne) were fine, if not just average. Familiar faces within the city’s comedy scene, they made the most out of Suzuki’s material in some scenes, including the time he wasn’t allowed to date white girls when he was a teen, even though he was “horny” (yes, Suzuki said horny. He also dropped the F-bomb during the show).
But the group dropped the ball in other sketches, like the impromptu science musical “Do the Science,” which was a clustermuck of clichéd cosmonaut jokes and nerd stereotypes. A gag about SHITs, — an acronym used for an actual fruit fly experiment that Suzuki performed back in the day — turned into a hot tub orgy that was funny for a moment before dragging on long after its expiry.
The show would have been more forgivable had it been staged at midnight in some underground comedy club. Things can get a little (understandably) messy at those kind of performances. But for a hyped-up show at the much-anticipated JFL42, the quality of Suzuki’s big comedy moment was certainly lacking.
Having experienced the Suzuki-stand-up-show-that-wasn’t, I’m still trying to figure out what was the point of having the celebrated enviro appearing in the festival when he didn't actually perform. No doubt Suzuki’s appearance was a just another goofy gimmick in the name of the environment that didn’t quite play out the way it was supposed to.
Did I want to see Suzuki stand up and make a fool out of himself? Of course I did. He’s David Suzuki! He’s the best at everything that’s unfunny, including growing a goatee! His stand-up had the potential to be hilarious for either all of the right or wrong reasons.
But, more than anything, I wanted to see him try something that was out of his comfort zone. There’s an art and a science to stand-up comedy — yes, science! Suzuki’s favourite word! — and maybe if Suzuki had taken the time to craft more of his “laugh time” rather than his “talk time,” we would have been subjected to a far more interesting show.
The audience still gave him two standing ovations, though. After all, he is David Suzuki.