Twelve months we’ve been waiting for Malik Bentalha, a year since all the tickets were snapped up for La Cigale, where the comedian is playing his third show New World until December 31. His admirers, those who have followed him since his first solo on stage Malik Bentalha tells ithad been waiting for it for much longer. Because the actor experienced a grueling journey through the desert before bouncing back. “Friends, I’m so happy to be here tonight, four years since I last went on stage”confirms the person concerned at the start of the show.
Of all the miseries he has endured in recent years, he is precisely his honey and our joy: they structure his new one-man show. The fiasco of his show Encore (2020), live on TF1, then the failure of his film Jack Mimoun and the secrets of Val Verde (2022), added to personal worries, led him to severe depression.
Today, he makes fun of this Malik from yesterday who no longer went outside, had gained a lot of weight and had his meals delivered to his home by asking the delivery men to leave the dishes in the elevator, for fear that they don’t judge him. Nothing gloomy though. On the contrary, we laugh a lot.
In fact, Malik Bentalha has never been better. He achieves with New World a personal show, both well written and paced. A stand-up full of surprises which also includes tasty doses of improvisation, in clash mode with spectators – a fashionable style of which he demonstrates a mastery that would make the current big name of the genre Redouane Bougheraba jealous.
And of course, he remains the master of the parodies of personalities carried out with a bang, here always brief and hilarious, from Abbé Pierre to the influencer Michou, from Nikos Aliagas to the candidate of Koh Lanta, and from Johnny Hallyday to Soprano massacring Mistral Winner by Renaud.
The show begins with a reminder of the parody videos which have made its notoriety take off again and hit like never before in the last twelve months on the internet: that of the pastry chef Cédric Grolet, that of the rapper Jul, and of course Pro HourPascal Praud’s show on CNews, which has, on all platforms combined, 40 million views in one year. A committed nugget called Too Much Time on TNewsconducted and performed masterfully – the imitation is so perfect that one would be mistaken.
The success of this video, which nevertheless earned him threats, seems to have been a turning point, to have served as a trigger for the comedian to let go more. These days he confided to GQ that he no longer wanted to work with Canal+.so as not to endorse the vision of society that its leaders have today”. He added that he now wanted “farea to pass messages”. But not necessarily those we think.
“It’s a show that’s a little more committed than the previous one, he remarks at one point in the show, it’s over the Malik of 4 years ago who imitated his mother who was drowning.” However “We’re not here to play politics.”. Indeed, no frontal attack on political parties or figures in this show, except for a mention of Macron.who speaks to Putin when he has failed to manage the Yellow Vests”. Malik Bentalha has gained in subtlety and freedom and his criticism is mainly societal, even if he particularly excels in self-deprecation.
“People say to me, why don’t we see you on TV anymore? I’ve given enough in terms of television humiliation. I remind you that I am the first participant in Rendez-vous en Terre stranger to have done it in France. These bastards took me to the Cévennes. I was born in Gard! I made Rendezvous in Unknown Land 12 minutes from my house. !”
And to launch into what constitutes for us the irresistible climax of the show: the laugh-out-loud story of his participation in the TF1 show The secret song in 2019, an obligatory promotional passage and a very, very big moment of solitude for him.
In reality, its main message, which becomes more and more clear as the show progresses, is that of mental health. And the need to talk and get help. “Talk, talk, talk, to an uncle, a friend, a psychologist, don’t give up, you’ll get through this.”he encourages. Malik Bentalha knows what he is talking about: he has been at the bottom of the hole.
Each of his setbacks is the subject of a twisting story, of the failure of his film – with a shoot where he finds himself grappling with a python then at Disneyland stuck in the Space Mountain attraction on the day of the exit because he decided not to look at the entry figures – to his romantic breakup which he had not seen coming despite all the red flashing lights, to his parents’ divorce and to his agent who did not only offers wooden projects, dubbing genre of “Chtoubi the spaceship pilot dog“.
“I had a motto when making this show, I wanted everything to be true”he confides on stage before giving us the proof in images at the end of the show. Let’s hope that the successes he has today will inspire him to perform equally lively stand-up in the future.
“Nouveau Monde” by Malik Bentalha, until December 31 at La Cigale (sold out) then on Zénith tour throughout France in the first quarter of 2025, with two stops at the Adidas Arena in Paris La Chapelle on 11 (sold out) and April 12, 2025
