Stage/Comedy

Who: Nicole Byer with Brandon Ash-Mohammed
Where: Meridian Hall
When: Fri., Sept. 21
Vibe: A wild, rambunctious crowd eager to see festival favourite
Highlight: Byer being totally unable to find a couple with a “normal” meet-cute story
Rating: NNNN (out of 5)

I ARRIVE at Meridian Hall a bit early so I can stop by the free, three-day street party happening outside the venue as part of this year’s Just for Laughs Toronto festival, but I don’t get there in time to catch any performers. Fred Armisen takes the stage outside at roughly the same time Nicole Byer does inside. The SNL alum is a big draw, but Byer is the one the festival crowd has actually paid to see.

Headliners usually have an opener and Byer is no different. Drawing from the immense pool of talent available at the festival, Byer’s choice of opener is undeniably a future headliner in his own right: Brandon Ash-Mohammed, star of last year’s LOL: Last One Laughing Canada and head writer for the second season of Canada’s Drag Race, for which he won a Canadian Screen Award.

You can’t really say Ash-Mohammed is a rising star in North American comedy. There’s no “rising” about it now; he just is a star, unconditionally. His 2020 album Capricornication debuted at No. 1 on iTunes in Canada. NPR’s Bullseye (correctly) called it “one of the best comedy albums” of that year.

Given his deft and certified talent, Ash-Mohammed has no problem skillfully warming up the eager crowd for Byer. His set features highlights from his latest album, including hilarious and insightful material about the intersections of being Trinidadian, Black, gay, Muslim and thicc.

Byer previously performed at Just for Laughs Toronto in 2019 as one of the “42” — the non-headlining acts whose names appear below the “headliners,” and whom festivalgoers can spend credits to see. This year, though, she returns as one of the festival’s best-selling draws — seeing her show requires buying a ticket to see her specifically. Unsurprisingly, it’s a packed house.

The Emmy-nominated star of Nailed It! and host of the critically acclaimed podcast Why Won’t You Date Me? opens with bits about her busy career, including working with John Cena on Wipeout and meeting Tom Cruise. The celebrity lifestyle anecdotes, though, are punctuated with moments of genuine anxiety over not currently working due to the SAG-AFTRA strike.

The Friday night crowd is rowdy. When discussing how the pandemic created a “new kind of person,” an audience member behind me loudly agrees. When she asks what kind of person the audience member thinks that might be, he briefly pauses and then shouts “Bad ones!” which busts up Byer.

Things really go off the rails, though, when she earnestly launches into doing crowd work, asking couples in the audience how they met. The first couple met when one was making out with the other’s best friend. (Oof.) The next couple says they met when one barfed on the other’s food. (Yikes.) Byer immediately hits eject on both of these, searching for a couple in the house with a “normal” story. This leads to the coup de grâce: a couple that says they met at a “chocolate party.” This is the knockout blow for Byer. She quickly hits eject on them, too, reeling from this unexpectedly absurd string of answers; but when the next couple can’t remember how they met, she returns to the “chocolate party” with questions — questions like “What the hell is a ‘chocolate party’?” No satisfactory explanation is offered, so Byer bails on the entire segment, concluding the dating scene in Toronto is just a wild, hot mess.