“We’re among old people tonight, it’s cool!”, says Philippe Lellouche to the audience at La Madeleine. In the pit and on the balconies, the average age fluctuates between 45 and 55 years old and that’s good, the comedian decided to talk about the good old days, the ones that those under 20 cannot experience.
What better way to woo the audience than to start your show with the disco years. “Why doesn’t that exist anymore, it was great!” From the first minutes, Lellouche becomes Philippe again when he talks about his first conquests, his first slow songs and his first kisses. Then he humorously evokes the relationship with his distant father: the one who “smoked with the windows closed in his 504” and who didn’t say “I love you”.
In Stand Alone, the actor comes close to the usual unpacking of mid-life crisis stereotypes. But his novice side as the only one on stage also makes him endearing. On the border between the one-man show and the stand-up, Philippe Lellouche allows himself some liberties with the public, without losing the thread of his show. “We do what we want now. Some people change sex, I change age. Now I’m 35,” he says. Philippe Lellouche can laugh at everything, without too much risk of being divisive.
The brother of Gilles Lellouche allows himself some criticism of the policy pursued by the current mayor of Paris. On this subject, he returns to one of his great moments of solitude: when he was running his show in Nantes, he had already criticized the former candidate for the presidential election in front of certain relatives of Johanna Rolland, mayor. of Nantes and former campaign manager of Anne Hidalgo. A very clumsy sequence which created a heavy atmosphere. “I felt an air conditioner coming towards me,” he says.
More than a show, it is a therapy that the actor gives himself for more than an hour on stage. After having directed and acted in films, played plays and presented a television show (Top Gear France), he wants to prove once again to his father that he did the right thing not to listen to him when he was young, when he did not take his desire to become an actor seriously. The last minutes of his show are not intended to make people laugh, but rather to pay a final tribute to his father. Before leaving the stage, Philippe Lellouche this time puts on the singer’s hat by covering Aznavour’s title: We will see each other again one day or another.
