An evening with lots of chuckles and great comedic moments
Marcel Lucont’s Whine List is an interactive stand up comedy show. Prior to the show beginning, the audience are given questionnaires where they describe things such as their worst day at work, and worst amorous encounter. The show then revolves around these stories with Marcel, played as the classic sneering French man, reacting to the stories, asking questions, and making jokes. This is interspersed with a few poems, and greatest hits of stories previously told. This means that 90% of each show will be entirely different and fresh each time. Useful for return viewings! This show has been running in one form or another for 8 years now, and has now also been turned into a podcast.
Due to the nature of the show, the humour and enjoyment is very dependent on the stories being told by the audience, and this can be a bit hit or miss. At the show I attended, a highlight was a story about echidna semen which was a great story in of itself, and Marcel was able to bring out even more of the humour. Some of the other stories elicited a slight chuckle, but really there didn’t seem to be a huge amount of comedy to mine, and yet they still received an equal amount of time devoted to them. Unfortunately for some of the stories I was just willing their sections to move on and to hope for more humour from the next.
This is definitely an impressive comedic feat and it certainly would not be for a faint hearted performer, having to trust your own abilities to make comedy out of whatever the audience puts in front of you. The structure of the show however, does mean that the comedy generally remains quite surface level and sometimes quite obvious. I found myself wanting the stakes to be raised somehow or for there to be a greater comedic crescendo, but alas none came.
The poetry sections, while amusing enough, perhaps felt unnecessary and like they would be suited more to a different show than this one. One of the poems felt incredibly dated as it was all about leaving Covid lockdowns and the hedonism that followed after this. With lockdown having been lifted over 2 years ago now, some of the references fell a bit flat and this could do perhaps with updating.
In conclusion, this show is a decent way to spend some time as it is entertaining enough with some decent laughs, and who knows, maybe you’ll learn more about echidna semen than you ever wanted to know.