by CHRIS BARRY

Sure, it’s hard to imagine the songs of Leonard Cohen being any more gut-wrenchingly funny than already evidenced on his records, but apparently, celebrated Brit comedian Arthur Smith has found a way to turn Lenny’s vision into even more of a laughfest. His play, Arthur Smith Sings Leonard Cohen, has been playing to rave reviews around the globe for a few years now, and will be running for the first and very last time at the Centaur Theatre this week as part of the Just for Laughs Comedy Festival. Smith, who claims to have been booze-free for the past year and a half, will also be giving a guided historical tour of Montreal over the course of his stay, a city that he’s visited just once and only for one day, but which involved his sleeping on Mount Royal, getting “bitten nearly to death by mosquitos,” and having all his luggage stolen from one of our city’s finest flophouses. The Mirror spoke to him earlier this week from his home in London.

Mirror: How did the idea to do this show come about?

AS: I’m a comedian and this is, in essence, a comic show. I’d already done a show called Arthur Smith Sings Andy Williams a few years ago and I picked the Arthur Smith Sings Leonard Cohen title because it seemed to offer the grimmest evening’s entertainment imaginable. I picked it partly because it’s comic, partly because I think he’s wonderful. At the beginning of the play, I actually say that I think he’s the greatest comedian of the 20th century. So great that he’s never actually got a laugh. I do think he’s an extremely witty man, though, and some of his songs are awfully beautiful. I do sing some of them but not all the way through. I’m not much a singer really, but, for that matter, nor is he. He himself said, “If I want to hear great singing, I’ll go to the Metropolitan Opera House.”

M: So how do you work the comic angle into it?

AS: I talk a bit about Leonard Cohen but mainly I talk about the things that echo in his songs: misery, death, poetry, love, sex, drinking, boredom, longing. That’s not to say there aren’t a few cheap gags along the way, though. The show is quite a lot about drinking as well. But since I first wrote it, I’ve given up drinking. I haven’t had a hangover in 18 months.

Truthless tyranny

M: What exactly is this walking tour thing you’re supposed to be doing while you’re here and how does it work?

AS: I don’t know what the hell it is. But I’ve done it in Sydney, Paris and various little towns around England. I mostly sort of improvise and I’ll probably have a few surprises. It’ll be me walking around with a group of people behind me while I talk and things just sort of happen. Ostensibly, I’ll be discussing the history of Montreal, of which, at the moment, I know nothing at all. I don’t believe in the tyranny of facts. It will be whatever I choose it to be. I used to do walking tours of Edinburgh quite a lot and they could be quite unruly, some of them. They were drink-fuelled and I was arrested at the last one so I retired from doing them for a year or so.

M: Are there always audience members on these things who are trying to be funnier than you?

AS: Oh God, yes. There have nearly been fights and all sorts of incidents.

M: Sounds like great comedy.

AS: Yes, well, and there’s heckling—quite often. Sometimes there are real magical moments on these things. One time I was standing on a bench, addressing the world and a bloke came and pushed me over the back of it. So I’m crying, “Is there a nurse on this walk?” As it turned out there happened to be five of them and I was traipsed on up to the casualty unit.

M: Sounds like great comedy.

AS: Well, this was more in the drunken days. I think it’s gonna be more seemly this time. Who knows? Maybe I’ll get the old [drinking] urge and you’ll have to come bail me out.

Arthur Smith Sings Leonard Cohen, part of Just For Laughs’ On The Edge series, runs July 16, 7pm, and July 17, 9:30pm, at the Centaur (453 St-François-Xavier). Details of his Late-Night Londoner Walking Tour TBA, see www.hahaha.com