Scott Thompson's 'Apres Le Deluge: The Buddy Cole Monologues' Show Is Uproariously Incorrect

The Great Hall, Toronto ON, March 14

BY Vish KhannaPublished Mar 15, 2019

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The Kids in the Hall's Scott Thompson suffered no fools, nor did he capitulate to contemporary norms of decorum and sensitivity. Or rather, one of his most popular and ingenious characters, Buddy Cole, opted to shoot for truth rather than politically correct commentary over the course of a series of monologues that found us travelling through Cole's time.
 
As he did on the Kids' old TV show and still does at live appearances, Cole is an outspoken, gay lounge lizard who gleefully opines about socio-cultural developments while sipping from a shaken martini. At the Great Hall for TOSketchfest, Thompson's stage featured a bar with all the ingredients Cole needed to make his drink of choice, and stools on either side so that the star of the show could share time with both the left and right sides of the room.
 
Cole himself cares not whether he offends those who lean left or right politically. He told us monologues in chronological order, as they were written and reflecting the topical concerns of their respective eras. For 1995, we heard a relatively benign story about a drunken romp that Cole had over a ping-pong tournament with a group of men named Bob. By the early 2000s, Cole told us an elaborate tale about a threesome he had with Saddam and Uday Hussein. All evening, Cole engaged us in an uproarious blend of fact, fiction and some conflation of both. Mostly we heard a lot about his gay sex lifestyle and it was all genuinely hilarious.
 
Thompson looked so happy throughout the show, even some recurring technical issues with his microphone proved great fodder for his sense of fun. Often pegged as the Kids' most gifted actor, he's a born performer who commands attention with his physicality and stern conviction that Cole, right or wrong, is actually always right. In an age where conservatives decry SJWs, Cole poked them too, puncturing some aspects of righteousness that he views as overwrought within gay culture and exhibited by the straights who, in some perverse martyrdom, feel some compulsion to protect it.
 
As such, Apres Le Deluge is something of a rollercoaster ride, with Cole in the front car, somehow steering the thing and daring us all to cry out in joy or rage or whatever it is we need to do to achieve some form of catharsis. It's hard, this life, Cole seems to say, as members of society seem to renegotiate what civility means every few years. It can be difficult to know what to say or how to behave.
 
In his own way, Cole is the ultimate release valve — a character that says whatever he wants because he doesn't care if it's appropriate, he just cares if it's true.

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