Filed Under Just For Laughs

Jon Dore’s Second Act

He’s already a star in Canada for his correspondent gig on CTV’s Canadian Idol as well as The Jon Dore Television Show (A female passerby joined our conversation outside the Cabaret Theatre to gush, “I watch you religiously…when I’m not homeless.”) Then Variety named him a 2009 Comic to Watch and he spent the week hopping from the Comedy Nest’s Comedy Night in Canada to Best of the Fest to Go West! to Galas and everything in between.

Dore was certainly winning on his own, but word quickly spread after his Friday-night Alternative Show appearance, when he brought New Face Rory Scovel on stage to perform at the same time under the guise of a time crunch. The ruse repeated Saturday night: Host Andy Kindler apologized for the show running long, and out Dore came with genius musical wordsmith Reggie Watts to talk over each other for seven straight minutes. In all honesty, neither was actually doing his act per se, but instead simultaneously rambling and listening intently, filling the spaces with improvised absurdity and subtly mocking themselves, the onstage “character” all comics embody to some degree and pretty much the entire show and Festival as a whole. Both even returned for an “encore,” with Dore soulfully crooning Bryan Adams’ “Heaven” as Watts flexed a foreign tongue on a nonsensical ditty apparently containing a “Ching chang chong” chorus. 

“Maybe I’m old school,” Kindler mock-apologized following the thunderous applause. “But I found it very distracting.” Distracting? Yes. Perhaps the most memorable set of the entire Festival? Yes again.