RON JAMES: MENTAL AS ANYTHING at the Winter Garden Theatre (189 Yonge), from tonight (Thursday, March 26) to April 4, Thursday-Saturday 8 pm. $49.50. 416-872-5555, ticketmaster.ca.
If you think stand-up comedy is a young man’s (or woman’s) game, Ron James has some news for you.
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“It’s a lifetime learning curve – I’m just getting better,” says the 50-something comic, who sells out 1,000-seat theatres coast to coast and whose CBC TV specials routinely draw big numbers.
“A carpenter doesn’t pick up his first hammer and build a mansion,” he says. “I didn’t start getting a point of view until I had a perspective on loss. In those early days of Second City, I was a scrawny, cocky young satirist who thought he had all the answers. No way. You don’t have perspective until you’re staring at $17 in the bank with two mouths to feed in Los Angeles, looking at another indigo night falling away with no work on the horizon.”
That’s a typical Jamesian outburst, full of biographical tidbits (early stint at Second City, disappointing three-year move to L.A.), some East Coast down-home wisdom, with lots of self-effacement and humility thrown in for good measure. Oh yeah, and it’s all delivered with a poetic style that’s uniquely his own.
Few working comics would know that “indigo” can refer to more than a bookstore. But James is the kind of comedian who, in a bit about Stephen Harper, can make a reference to Leni Riefenstahl’s propagandist Triumph Of The Will. Now, that’s subversive.
“As Dennis Miller once said, ‘If you don’t get it, go somewhere where you’re going to get it,'” he says, happy to be talking about his comic influences, like early Miller (“since then he’s become a bit of a Stepin Fetchit for the Republican cause”) and Billy Connolly.
“These are guys who love the language,” he says, nursing a bottle of water. “I remember looking at both of them and thinking, ‘I have to embrace this discipline. I’d rather do this than sit at home waiting for my agent to phone me.'”
He pauses, then adds, “The only time that agent called was when scripts asked for Christmas elves or the mentally challenged.” James is a little guy. “Fairly limited.”
In his new show, the first to play his current hometown of Toronto in five years, James discusses politics, aging baby boomers, the environment – and of course the economy.
Although he may look like the soccer dad next door and goes over well everywhere from Corner Brook to Victoria, don’t expect safe material.
“It’s important to be progressive,” he says. “I’m not a foot soldier for the status quo. I always try to push the envelope without losing the room. In Alberta, I called Harper and the Tories on their stance on same-sex marriage. In BC, I push them on their sanctimony.
“Here, I’m going to call out the bankers. Try to get them to give you a loan. They’ll trip over themselves to give you money when you’re flush. But when you need the money, they’d sooner rub their balls with broken glass than cough up a nickel.”
Additional audio clips
On living in Toronto for 30 years (plus an aside about Ottawa):
On the economic slump and comedy:
On his TV series Blackfly and an upcoming one on CBC:
glenns@nowtoronto.com
