Mike Delamont: The Devil

Mike Delamont—MTYP – Mainstage

After four editions of God is a Scottish Drag Queen at previous Fringes, Mike Delamont is trying something new (not including his other show Mama’s Boy, also at this Fringe). Like the Scottish Drag Queen shows, this is basically a stand-up comedy show, mixing scripted and seemingly improvised material while Delamont is in character. This time around, his character looks much like Ken Bone, to whom he alludes, wearing a completely-buttoned red cardigan, glasses, and a pasted-on mustache that he inexplicably removes halfway through the show. He makes the point that he as the devil doesn’t have horns and a tail, as commonly depicted in art, but he never explains his current get up or mine it very much for laughs, like he did for his Scottish Drag Queen.

Unfortunately, this show seems to lack a tight focus. Delamont spends more time on comic book heroes than on Satan’s actual appearances in the Bible, and this is disappointing. Furthermore, many of his jokes are about the coldness of Winnipeg’s winter rather than anything religious. He also seems to lean rather heavily on audience-submitted questions, not all of which he had strong, comedic answers to. For instance, someone submitted the question, “Why is there Donald Trump?” and he couldn’t come up with anything at all. Nevertheless, some of the funniest parts of the show were his snappy responses to real-time interactions with the audience. This helped to generate plenty of laughter from the completely sold-out house, at the performance I attended.

Konrad Antony