French alter ego of UK comedian Alexis Dubus, Marcel Lucont’s Whine List is literally that – a list of complaints. Submitted by the audience before the show, they concern seemingly inoffensive topics like one’s worst day at work and their most regrettable amorous encounter. Lucont proceeds to share the finest answers in what he dubs a group therapy session without any solutions.
It’s a simple enough structure no different to the casual act of trawling through comments on social media, but it’s Lucont’s comparing and abrasively French character that renders Whine List an unrestrained and marvellously rowdy affair. Topped off with a raunchy musical number, a short mockumentary about England’s depressing beaches and some light topical commentary on everything from hipster beards to gun control in America, and you have yourself one délicieuse soirée.
Don’t be mistaken into thinking that Lucont’s Whine List is pretentious, however, simply because its character is. In actuality, Lucont is wholly relatable; he embodies the egotistical cartoon devil that one imagines sits on their shoulder. He celebrates the simple things like alcohol, sex, his country and himself, and denounces almost everything else.
The result is a show that is unashamedly lowbrow, an outcome for which Lucont is only partly responsible. Just as ludicrous as the French personality are his guests’ answers, which range from tragic (cleaning excrement out of children’s ski gear) to outlandish (dating a cocaine afflicted magician for six weeks) to downright comical (accidentally crashing a taxi through a passenger’s wall).
First-rate character comedies are known for invoking caricatures that are as much surreal as they are recognisable. Marcel Lucont’s Whine List is an engaging and irresistible delight because it effectively crafts that caricature out of his audience.
By Andrew Nardi
