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How did it all begin for you? Was there ever plan B? You’ve starred in musicals, had your own TV shows and worked in films and radio. Where do you feel most comfortable? Your new tour is called The Greatest Entertainer (In His Price Bracket). What can people expect? Do you ever get mistaken for anybody else? You learned stilt walking, fireeating and tightrope walking for circus musical Barnum. What was the hardest? You’ve starred in many hit shows. Is there any role you’d still like to play one day? You’ve appeared in more than 20 of the UK’s biggest pantos and appeared with Gok Wan earlier this year? What was that like? Any other career highlights? FRENCH raconteur Marcel Lucont enjoys a good glass of wine. Yet despite plenty of decent vinos now produced in the UK, from Cornwall and Kent, to East Anglia and Staffordshire, he’s not impressed.
“It is evident there is a decent gap between your understanding of ‘decent’ and mine,” he says drily. “My acquaintance Didier brought a bottle of English wine to a Hallowe’en soirée. What seemed a mildly amusing prank at the time in fact led to several arguments, two accusations of poisoning and a divorce... although I believe there were issues present in the marriage before this night.”
Lucont’s been imparting his words of (cough) wisdom to us Brits since making his Edinburgh Fringe debut in 2009 with Sexual Metro. His latest one man show is entitled Whine List, and sees both Lucont, and his audience, having a bit of a moan. Airing their gripes and confessing their sins, it plays on our obsession with self-help.
It was French philosopher Michel Foucault who said: “In its function, the power to punish is not essentially different from that of curing or educating”. And it’s an idea which Lucont has considered with Whine List.
“The trick is to frame such punishment as entertainment,” he decides. “In Whine List (an) individual’s own actions are held up to the collective jury of the audience, their punishment is to relive these moments once again, in all their misery.
“In certain cases we are left to question whether actual legal punishment should have ensued at the time.
“A taxi driver at one show in Edinburgh who crashed his taxi through one of his passenger’s walls claimed that this passenger ‘did not mind’. We, of course, never heard the side of the passenger who awoke with a hangover and one less wall.”
Marcel Lucont: Whine List is at the Royal Spa Centre, Leamington, on April 27.