One of Larry David’s many onscreen nemeses brings her solo show Stories From the Brink: My Festive Near-Death Adventures to Montreal.
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Props must go to Quebec City’s ComediHa! for filling the void left by the cancelled Just for Laughs festival.
A little over a month ago, the Quebec City fest announced that to mark its 25th anniversary, it would be presenting ComediHa! Salue Montréal from July 18 to 28, with paid indoor and free outdoor concerts in and around the Quartier des spectacles. No coincidence that these are pretty much the same dates and venues previously occupied by JFL.
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ComediHa! CEO Sylvain Parent-Bédard wasted little time in unveiling the franco lineup for the salute to Montreal last week, and an announcement is apparently forthcoming next week about the anglo component. Word is he may even put that part of the fest under the Just for Laughs banner — which would make sense, since ComediHa! recently purchased the financially beleaguered JFL’s major assets and has now effectively taken over the festival.
But great intentions notwithstanding, anglo comedy fans had best not hold their collective breath in anticipation of catching the likes of a Jerry Seinfeld or a Kevin Hart here in July — unless the comics are flying over the city and their planes have to touch down due to mechanical difficulties.
It took seasoned JFL execs with connections a year or more to land those types of A-list performers during the fest’s glory days, so nobody should realistically expect that calibre of comic here with just a month’s lead time. On the plus side, this will likely mean much of the anglo component will come from local wits who would often get overlooked by JFL programmers.
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There will be at least one out-of-town flash from JFL’s past performing here in July – though not at the ComediHa! fest. Bobby Slayton, the pit bull of comedy, has been booked to revive the spirit of his hit Nasty Show series, July 19 at Le 9e.
And for more immediate comedy gratification, you won’t do much better than JFL vet Iris Bahr, whose latest self-deprecating solo show, Stories From the Brink: My Festive Near-Death Adventures, has its world première at the St-Ambroise Montreal Fringe Festival this week.
Bahr may be best known for one of the most memorable and hysterical Curb Your Enthusiasm episodes of all. She was cast in a recurring role as an Orthodox Jewish woman, who got stuck on a ski lift alongside perhaps the last person anyone would want to share that space with: Curb creator/star Larry David.
To get away from the ever-confrontational, ever-curmudgeonly David character, she jumped off the stalled chairlift and broke many bones in the process. Bahr also showed up in the recent series finale, testifying for the prosecution at David’s trial for his alleged crimes against humanity.
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“Jumping off the ski lift actually involved stunt co-ordinators,” Bahr says. “And honestly, Larry was amazing. He’s not the curmudgeon people see on screen. He was actually delightful.”
Bahr also shows up in the dynamite comedy series Hacks as a Russian nurse trying to administer meds to the show’s calculating lead, played by Jean Smart.
Bahr is no slacker. She can be seen in the Amazon Freevee series Dinner With the Parents. Her last solo show, DAI (meaning “enough” in Hebrew), earned much acclaim in the U.S. and England. And following her run here, she sets off for the Toronto Fringe fest with another solo offering, See You Tomorrow.
“I first came to Montreal years ago as a New Face at Just for Laughs. Now I am a Middle-Aged Face,” quips Bahr, who later made another JFL appearance.
Bahr hails from a family of Bulgarian Jews living in New York.
“In Stories From the Brink, I talk about parents who were extremely secular but who for some strange reason put me in an Orthodox yeshiva in the Bronx,” she says. “I was leading a double life my entire childhood, pretending to be religious by day at the yeshiva. Then I would come home and my dad would eat his pork salami, and then we’d go off to the Guggenheim (Museum).
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“It was a little stressful and the basis of a lot of my childhood trauma. On top of all that, when his family fled the country after the Holocaust, my dad was put into a Jesuit school. So nothing tracks here.”
And now we know why Bahr ended up in the comedy world.
Turns out that jumping off a chairlift is the least of her tragedies. Among her other “festive near-death adventures,” Bahr ruminates in the show about a couple of perilous backpacking, rafting expeditions she embarked on in Asia and South America. She also deals with the death of her brother.
“I always believe in taking the tragedy in my life in particular through a humorous lens. It’s my coping mechanism. Through the laughter, it enables me to tolerate and to explore the human condition in all its ups and downs.
“There’s a lot out there, but I think that as an artist that’s our job.”
AT A GLANCE:
Iris Bahr performs her solo show Stories From the Brink: My Festive Near-Death Adventures Friday to Sunday at Cité-des-Hospitalières, 251 des Pins Ave., as part of the St-Ambroise Montreal Fringe Festival. For schedule, tickets and more information, see montrealfringe.ca.
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