JFL Toronto Review: Chloe Radcliffe
Filed under: Reviews, Festivals
If there is a black belt in comedy, or better yet a Nobel Peace Prize, give it to Chloe Radcliffe.
I know in comedy there's that cliché of "never blame the audience", but wow what a terrible audience. This was especially weird for a festival. I get that in a festival pass scenario, you can get audiences that aren't there to specifically see that comic, so the crowd is low energy... This was a whole other beast entirely. Normally, when there is a problem in the crowd, it's an isolated and specific problem. This was like a perfect storm, a hybrid if you will. I was left with far more questions than answers.
Questions like:
- Why are so many people blackout drunk at 9 PM on a Thursday?
- Why are so many people on dates, catcalling the comedian?
- Who interrupts with full paragraph rejoinders?
- How many men were mansplaining the show to their date while it was still happening?
For context, I once agreed to a corporate gig that turned out to be a biker gang's Christmas party. This audience scared me more. Chloe somehow simultaneously embodied Captain Ahab chasing a white whale through a torrential squall and our best friend at a frat party collectively holding our hair back while we puked.
Going into the show, I already loved Chloe Radcliffe. I'm from Winnipeg and she's already done the Winnipeg Comedy Festival and the Oddblock Comedy Festival. To be honest, I forgot she wasn't Canadian. She's from Minnesota, which is practically a Canadian province. After last night, I don't just love her, I respect the hell out of her.
A lesser comedian would've just gone into automatic pilot and played the hits. Especially after the crowd started shouting, "better names for her mailing list", all involving mole jokes about the birthmark on her face. Birthmarks and moles are not the same thing. That is how fargone the audience was as a whole.
Chloe Radcliffe did not back down for a single second. I cannot emphasize this enough. She locked in and rode the mechanical bull. I'm not just saying this as a comedian, I'm saying this is someone who's practiced Buddhism for a decade: The level of presence and loving awareness she maintained was astounding.
At a certain point, it became clear that she was abandoning whatever plan she had and tailored the set to us in real time, not only adapting the material she had but genuinely fielding responses to bizarre interactions. She never judged us and she never gave up on us. By the end, Chloe somehow managed to successfully land the plane (it's a lot of metaphors, I know) and everyone wanted to be her best friend. I feel like I witnessed a miracle.
I am genuinely going to try and go back and see her again tonight, because I have to see the set she intended. Please give Chloe Radcliffe honorary Canadian citizenship. She earned it.
Tags: Chloe Radcliffe, JFL Toronto, Just for Laughs, Minnesota, stand-up comedy
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