Pretty mediocre
by LB on 7/29/25L'Olympia - MontrealRating: 2 out of 5Mae Martin themselves was workshopping material (they said so a few times), and while I understand that comics need to do that at various points in developing their acts, it’s disappointing that they chose to do it at the biggest international comedy festival where people paid full price to attend expecting to see polished work. The material itself was pretty hit and miss. A lot revolved around their new hollywood lifestyle which wasn’t very relatable, and a bit frustrating given the circumstances (showing up with very rough material). Nick Mohammed was absolutely insufferable as his character “Mr Swallow”. Not funny at all. We understood he’s supposed to be “cringe,” but gliding around stage on roller skates, shouting and completing a rubik’s cube just isn’t funny IMHO. There were very few actual jokes and those that were there were lacklustre. We loved him in Ted Lasso and had actually bought tickets to see his full show the next day but after seeing this 10 minute set we gave them away for free, it was that unbearable. Good thing too because from photos of the event we could see he repeated much of that set in the full performance so we’d have had to see the same unfunny bits twice and then some. It’s just not our cup of tea at all. Nina Conti was great, I’ve seen her monkey act before but hadn’t seen her audience latex mask improv/crowd work bit before and it’s accomplished and impressive. She’s very quick and funny, it was a welcome improvement. Sabrina Jalees was solid, and I appreciated how she made bold choices for comedy like talking about her and her wife’s miscarriage. That’s a difficult subject to tackle in a comedy routine and she pulled it off. Fortune Feimster was OK, but not particularly funny to be honest. I was a bit disappointed in her set as well. A lot about her divorce, which is certainly pretty relatable, but it was just average IMHO. All in all it wasn’t a great show, despite a full house of ~1300 people. Both Mae and Fortune commented that the venue/attendance was much bigger than they’d thought it would be, so maybe they had planned a more chill/casual approach not realizing it was a bigger event. If that’s the case, they should have been briefed better by the festival. Of course, I have no idea if that actually happened, I’m just hypothesizing given the disconnect we felt from the context of the show and the content they brought to it. I normally love Mae Martin and have seen them before, hopefully next time will be better!!