L’homme à tout faire

It was a nice way to end the Festival Montréal Complètement Cirque for us, with the multi-talented David Dimitri and his show L’homme cirque (the Circus Man). The guy has very good comedic timing and interacts well with the crowd, especially the kids but without forgetting about the adults.

The show itself ran through a lot of disciplines — or simulations of disciplines — including trick riding (the horse was on wheels), the teeterboard (weight falling on one end propels the acrobat skyward), tightrope walking, musical instrument-playing (accordion AND trumpet!) and being shot out of a cannon, with a healthy dose of clowning throughout. You can only imagine what came out the other end of the “horse” when he tweaked its ear! To keep the image of the man who does it all on his own, he made frequent trips to a little control box to press a button to start the music for the next segment.

I might have been entertained by the content of the show, but I was even more amused by the interactions with the crowd. He shot a couple of glances at the crying baby to the right of us (her poor parents ended up leaving of their own volition when she wouldn’t stop crying), but he also had another girl come out to feed imaginary oats to the “horse” and enlisted (or tried to enlist) a series of people to pass him a rope. The first gentleman missed his outstretched hand, the second, a little shy boy, just sat and stared at him and finally the little girl further over succeeded. He then shot a derisive glance at the man who had failed, much to our amusement. He also went back to the shy boy once or twice, to get the same inert response.

After shooting himself out of the cannon he attempted a clever move to toss his slipper into the cannon behind him and missed! The “Awwww!” of the crowd was met with a challenge to come out and try it. Shy boy? No response. Another boy shouted out “Me!” and was invited out to try. He got it on the second attempt and the crowd went wild.

The grand finale was a tightrope walk that took him through a “door” in the roof of the tent and all the way over to a tower outside. He whipped out a camera when he got to the tower and waved us all into position so that we could be the background of his selfie. Very entertaining.

This video of the act is from another event, but it was the best choice to give you a good idea of the variety of the show: