The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Gad comes to College Street Thursday
‘The French Seinfeld’ moves to America, makes good
NEW HAVEN » Gad Elmaleh, known as the Jerry Seinfeld of France, jumps right into a phone conversation with one of his strongest themes:
“I was practicing my English while waiting for your call,” he says, to a reporter’s laugh. “When I talk to someone on the phone, I’m always scared to miss something because when you see the person ... right in front of you, and you don’t understand something, it’s OK because you see the face. But on the phone, it’s stressful, you know?”
This from a man who has been getting laughs on NBC’s “Late Night with Seth Meyers,” TBS’s “Conan” and CBS’s “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert”. And he’ll be at the College Street Music Hall in New Haven Thursday night, two nights before he plays Carnegie Hall in New York.
The Morroccan-born Frenchman has filled stadiums in France but a few years ago had a dream to craft a stand-up show in English. In September 2015 Elmaleh did just that with “Oh My Gad,” and he set out to conquer American clubs and theaters.
Speaking of Seinfeld, Elmaleh voiced Seinfeld’s character in the French version of the animated “Bee Movie,” and since then he has appeared on Seinfeld’s “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee” online.
Elmaleh, whose style and look are similar to Seinfeld, took diction lessons to learn the nuances of English and then blended in his years of experience on timing and delivery in this challenge to make Americans laugh.
“Last week I was on tour,” he said, “and I was talking to a guy who was a little drunk at my hotel, and we started to laugh because I said to him, ‘You know what? English is already a challenge. But right now, I have a double challenge because you’re a little drunk and I don’t know
that English . ... The drunk English is not like the drunk French.”
Elmaleh knows there is interest and humor in cultural differences, in the hands of a comedian (as opposed to a president, say).
“People make you see things that you don’t really see anymore,” he said of visiting foreigners. A New York friend visiting him in Paris couldn’t stop pointing out “dogs’ poop on the sidewalk, like everywhere. And I use it to walk between them... like a habit . ... But he was amazed and was like, ‘Oh my God, why don’t they...’ and I was like ‘OK, get over it.’”
Fresh from three gigs last week in Texas, we asked Elmaleh how his multicultural act went with audiences in such a red state.
Fine, he said, because there are always ex-pats in the audience from Morrocco and other countries. In Dallas, they brought Moroccan flags to his
show, raising eyebrows with the cowboy types. “But I love that; I love that mess, if I can call it that.”
There’s a lot to observe as a newer resident of America.
“The interesting thing is, I was born in Morocco, I lived in France (and French Canada at one point) ... I moved to America and a lot of people from different countries relate to my story. I didn’t understand why, in the beginning, people from Iran, Egypt or China would tell me after my show, ‘Oh, I really relate to your story.’
“It’s just like the outsider thing, the underdog, the fish out of water, this whole thing we can relate. So I have those people, and ... we have very smart and interested people in different cultures who are American, and who are ready to hear those stories.”
So as most media stories do these days, we swing to the partisan enmity in Washington and President Donald Trump.
Elmaleh, who works without profanity and lists Seinfeld, Brian Regan and New York comic Ryan Hamilton as favorites, said we have to be careful not to put people in the same box.
“It’s a weird time. I try to be positive. I really do think, and it may sound banal or obvious, but I really do think we have to stay united these days because everyone is furious against Trump. And of course Trump is the problem but he is not the only problem. The problem is what we can do, as human beings and citizens, as Americans, immigrants, foreigners — we need to be together, united, try to do something positive. We cannot just be mad at everything that is going on. It’s stupid. We are not teenagers, you know?”
And when it comes to making people laugh, it comes down to skills that brought him considerable fame that he left behind in France (“Been there, done that,” he said).
“By (having built) a career already, I’m starting over, yes, on stage. But I’m not starting over as an artist and as a performer,” he said. When a fellow comedian expressed surprise that he had only been working in English for a year, he told him, “You know what, it’s not just one year, it’s 22 years because even if you’ve done stand-up in French or Chinese, Arabic or Italian, you’re an artist, you’re a stand-up comedian, you’re a performer. When you show up on stage, we immediately know that you own the space. Because that’s your job.”
All Elmaleh knows about New Haven is Yale (because we reminded him). But he was amused that sometimes locals claim to have invented the pizza (a slight exaggeration). He said food is a reliable part of his act, such as when he kids Californians about their claim to fusion food. “I try to explain it’s because they don’t have their own food, their own cuisine. So they take every country’s food, they mix it up and they call it ‘fusion.’ And the thing they own is ‘fusion.’”
But he likes the pizza idea for a bit, saying, “Maybe it would be funny to say that there’s a little village in Italy who was mad at (New Haven) and said that they invented the hamburger.”
I inform him that people have said that about Louie’s Lunch, too.
“Oh... apparently you guys invented everything. Everything comes out from Yale University. People are working on these concepts for years and then they come up with hamburger and pizza.”
Tickets ($25-$30) for the 8 p.m. show are available at manicproductions. org or the CSMH box office.