Plus, two rising comedy stars who skew light and dark through their jokes on
Rob Mailloux’s dark humour might make you squirm, but Mark Little keeps it light
There is more standup comedy being performed weekly in Toronto than anyone can watch; naturally, most of it is mediocre. Talented performers with distinct esthetics make an impression, and so it is with two rising stars close to the opposite ends of the tonal spectrum: Mark Little, a smiling dispenser of light and energetic whimsy; and Rob Mailloux, the dark dispenser of mordant laughs. We chatted with them both about how they create. Mark Little It’s a spring night at The Painted Lady on Ossington Ave., and Mark Little is singing onstage again. Kind of; it’s shouting more than anything, over the mellow blues band that normally plays between comics and that Little insisted keep playing.
“Keep it going, guys . . . and YOU DON’T STOP KEEPING IT GOING!” he hollers as conventional comedy always threatens to arrive but never quite does, and the ensemble ramps up as Little falls into impromptu barking of a part of System of a Down’s “Chop Suey.” (“WHY’D YOU LEAVE THE KEYS UPON THE TABLE? YOU WANTED TO!”) After five minutes of hilarious bedlam, the song ends and Little finds a capper for the set (“For my first joke . . .”) and sits down in quiet triumph.
Canadian comedy fans know Little from any number of places: his regular role on TV’s Mr. D and before that the well-remembered Picnicface; as a member of the award-winning sketch troupe Get Some; a strong standup set on Conan this year.
More to the point, he won two national standup competitions in 2009 with a nebbishy persona. He was on his way as a touring standup, but he was embarrassed by the familiarity of his material — “I wouldn’t perform those jokes in front of my peers” — and after a rough weekend at the Yuk Yuk’s in Ajax he resolved to reinvent himself.
“I’ll be like the home-schooled kid,” he says now, looking back at his plan, “who never gets bullied at school and comes out a little bit weird — not for everyone but . . . he’s got a pretty rosy view of life.”
Little insists there’s darkness in his creativity (unhelpfully undermining this writer’s premise); in a recent spot in Etobicoke a delightfully absurd bit about strippers and cake was preceded by one about mnemonic devices, which turned into a recounting of a child abduction. It’s a song, naturally. Rob Mailloux Rob Mailloux used to have an eating disorder, he tells his audience in a Danforth Ave. performance space on a drizzly August night. He doesn’t wait for the crowd’s sympathy — men with the condition never get any, he says — and gives none himself, scorning adults still blaming Barbie dolls for their body-image issues. “It never occurred to me that I could blame my toys. G.I. Joe, what did you do to me?”
The crowd winces at its earlier indifference and then erupts into laughter; Mailloux has made them see their own true sentiments.
“The best way I’ve ever heard my own act described is I say something that nobody agrees with, and then I prove why it’s right and then I make it fun,” says the Windsor, Ont. native in an interview, conceding that his raw material leaves him feeling vulnerable: “I really don’t want to upset anybody; that’s the weirdest part about it, I know.” Even some comedy fans who would profess shock at some of Mailloux’s gags might have to concede they owe him a debt.
As the founder of Toronto’s annual Dark Comedy Festival, he has brought in Toronto favourites like Jim Norton and Maria Bamford and opened for them; a bold move by a fan of their work as well as a sly move by a particular kind of comic, gaining himself exposure before people of the right sensibility.
“Those audiences are always fantastic . . . very discerning taste,” says the Mailloux, who turned to carving out his own niche after, like Little, shying away from the Yuk Yuk’s chain and finding himself hedging his bets creatively.
“I had a f---ed up childhood (and) it led me, probably, to have a lot of darker ideas I suppose, but I never write anything in the lens of like, ‘This will shock them.’ ”
Indeed, his material — these days tackling matters like the Washington Redskins’ name and which diseases become causes célèbres — ends up underlining awkward truths more than horrifying flights of fancy.
In an extended bit about his own adoption, he tells his Danforth audience that he’s lucky to be white, so as a baby he was snapped up quickly. The crowd’s laughter is audibly flavoured by shame.