The powerful cult of The Daily Show revealed itself for the second time at this year’s JFL42 comedy festival. On the same night that Trevor Noah, last seen performing to a sold out Sony Centre for the Performing Arts on Saturday, took his seat at the desk previously occupied by Jon Stewart, Daily Show correspondent John Hodgman played to a packed house at the Royal Theatre.
If only Hodgman had delivered on Monday night in the same way that Noah wowed a crowd of 3,100 on Saturday. Unfortunately, the actor and author’s TV persona seems an awful lot more likable and funny than his long-winded and largely inaccessible stand-up self.
Hodgman deserves some credit for attempting to re-imagine the framework of a stand-up show in what was a far from typical hour of comedy. He began his first ever live show in Toronto by engaging the crowd in a meditative exercise that supposedly originated from a TED Talk and finished with a disarming cover of Modern Lovers’ classic hit “Roadrunner”, which he played on a ukulele.
In between, however, lay a long-form, patience-demanding set that seemed to be alternately self aware but also blind to the waning interest of the audience. Hodgman jokingly referred to himself as “America’s greatest storyteller” and poked fun at himself with jokes about owning two summer homes and being off TV after growing accustomed to the spotlight that he acknowledged were un-relatable. But those jokes said nothing of a lengthy and largely pointless narrative journey that took viewers through his transition from growing up in Massachusetts to his new home in Maine, with plenty of stories but precious few laughs along the way.
There was clearly no shortage of true life experience in the anecdotes, with deeply specific references being made to a travel journey lined with cairns, garburators – which is apparently a Canadian term unfamiliar to Americans – witches and even a town dump. It would have been delightful in its wholly Americana nature if it wasn’t so boring and largely self-indulgent. Hodgman seemed to be looking to amuse an audience of one with his stories, sustaining a deliberate pace and ambling from one story to another with little in the way of punch.
It’s hard to know what was expected from the high brow comic, who comes off as intellectual but never smug in guest appearances in films like “Baby Mama” and TV shows like “Community” and “Married”. His written work is a little more closely connected to his live show, but the crowd still didn’t seem quite ready to embrace a trip through Hodgman’s frankly uninteresting life journey. What began as anxious applause and easy laughter became more scattered, stilted and infrequent as the hour trudged on without really going anywhere.
There will always be a place for a smart humorist and satirist out there, so it’s unlikely that he was greatly diminished in the eyes of many attendees at the Royal on Monday night. Yet it is hard to know what, exactly, people were supposed to get out of the experience of listening to Hodgman speak about himself in a manner that was insightful but not particularly revealing. And it certainly wasn’t particularly funny.
