Stand-up
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Back after a shortened farewell to the stage, the comedian puts his audience through the grill of a new, partly improvised, warmly destructive show, “Renaissance”.
Mustapha El Atrassi, a nasty friend who wishes you well, is back. He had hung up. His mysterious farewell to the stage in 2022 with Game Over, in a shattered tone, revealed him as a tragic clown, taking leave of the public as one saves one’s own skin. The conquering entry onto the European stage in Paris this winter, to the bounding sound of Backseat Freestyle by Kendrick Lamar («Goddamn I feel amazing…») marks the comeback with all smiles, to ovations. Not a word of self-justification, useless. Where were we again? Oh yes. Mustapha El Atrassi returns to tell you horrors with his altar boy smile, at ease and infernal, without breaking a sweat. Inexplicably warm beyond abjections, possessed by the demon of frankness and vulgarity, without desire to lock it down. It works especially in improv: the fans, gathered en masse without the slightest promotion apart from an Instagram post, know the principle. Settle the score with all the communities in the room, where the “minorities” are the majority – Arab diasporas, mixed couples, groups of veiled girlfriends, “the kheys” (brothers) from here and elsewhere… The subversion is that the host makes them the default spectators on whom to direct the conniving humor. And the «lesson» (white people in the subversive sense:
