Courtesy of JFL42

After an afternoon of watching Blue Jays baseball at a sports bar we made our way to the Royal Theatre for our first JFL42 show of the night. With Al Madrigal serving as the lead-off hitter for a night of comedy we figured that we were in pretty good hands.

We know Al Madrigal best as a correspondent on The Daily Show where he will be heading back to work on Monday. In addition to his work on that show, Madrigal is a talented stand-up comedian in his own right. For that reason, we were really excited to see what he’d have to say at his one hour show in Toronto at JFL42.

On stage, Madrigal’s performance is measured, calm, intelligent, and at the same time funny. During his set, he addressed a number of topics including living as in the United States as the grandson of Mexican immigrants, marriage, online reviews, and raising children. His own experience as someone with Mexican heritage is a source of a lot of great material. Madrigal himself doesn’t speak Spanish, which only makes the situations that he has been in the past funnier for the audience. Madrigal wasn’t reinventing the wheel here. He just found a completely new way to tell stories from this perspective. The comedy felt inclusive. Whether or not audience members share Madrigal’s experience, he always made his jokes relatable.

Our favourite bit of the night had to have been when he discussed the process that people have to go through to leave an online review. Specific ratings really got to him and now when we visit TripAdvisor or Yelp! we’ll give more consideration to the sanity of the people who are posting on there. We’ve heard funny bits about specific commentary, but Madrigal, like with other observations, found a new angle that we’d never seen or heard before.

Unfortunately, last night was Al Madrigal’s last performance at JFL42, but if you get a chance to see him wherever you are, you’ll probably enjoy him. His show was a good one to start off our JFL42 experience for 2015.