Comedy Review: Henry Sir’s “Chalant” rocks the Grindstone
Edmontonian stand-up comic's debut album recording got laughs with wry observational humour
SuppliedWhat: Recording of Chalant, a comedy album
Who: Henry Sir, Edmontonian stand-up comedian
Where: The Grindstone
When: November 16-17, 9:00 p.m.
“If you’re ever in a political debate and don’t want to contribute anything, just say what year it is. Just go, ‘Guys, come on, it’s 2018,’ and someone’ll be like ‘Hell yeah, he gets it!’”
If this sort of astute political observation grabs your interest, you would have felt right at home at the recording of Henry Sir’s debut album, Chalant (which will be released sometime in the new year). Sir’s hour-long stand-up comedy special was composed predominantly of observational humour, bringing light to often-overlooked ironies and hypocrisies in our culture. Sir showed astute awareness of how being a white, liberal, middle-class man shapes his perspective, lampooning those occupying the same socioeconomic position.
The special began with a lengthy intro read by Sir’s opening act, Bobby Warrener. The intro, which the audience had been informed Sir wrote beforehand, opened with an instruction to not, in fact, give the audience that information. Warrener then reluctantly (or perhaps, awkwardly) launched into a tongue-in-cheek spiel beginning with Sir’s reception of the audience, followed up with flattery and praise for Sir himself. With each additional reminder as to the speech’s authorship, it fell shorter and shorter of sustaining its humour. By the end, it felt as though we were merely watching Warrener put hats atop hats.
However, Warrener’s own 10-minute opening set preceding this was well-received by the audience for its delightful crassness. The significantly more profane nature of his set, juxtaposed starkly with Sir’s, proved to be mutually flattering for both performers.
Sir compensated for the dragging intro as he took the stage. The intro’s tone of sardonic observations at the audiences’ expense carried into a pre-recorded voiceover of Sir’s inner monologue, which was in a manner reminiscent of Demetri Martin’s The Overthinker. With expert comedic timing, he stood wordlessly overlooking the audience, matching his facial expressions to quips and ponderings at the audience’s expense.
Throughout the rest of the set, Sir charted through several topics, from an excessively homoerotic interpretation of golf to a critique of competitively woke white people’s fear of accidentally looking racist in front of other woke white peers. Many of the situations he described felt immediately recognizable, and yet have so far been underexplored in stand-up.
Some jokes were more engaging than others: a bit making fun of unpalatable wine jargon (like oak and earth) didn’t quite land, but jokes at the expense of morally superior dog owners were strong.
The audience’s reception of the performance was almost entirely positive; the single joke that didn’t go over well (a quip about poker players identifying as athletes) was saved with a self-aware quip about the beauty of editing. Sir left the stage to enthusiastic applause, with attendees wondering aloud to one another as to when they’d be able to stream or download the album version of Chalant to relive the experience.
