Quebec's language tensions hardly seem like a laughing matter.

A Montreal school board plans to prohibit students from speaking English during recess as well as in class. The Parti Québécois wants to extend Bill 101 to prevent francophones and the children of immigrants from attending community college in English. A language-defence group campaigns against what it considers excessive public funding of English-language universities and hospitals. Laughing yet?

Enter comedian Samir Khullar, 36, known by his stage name Sugar Sammy.

In an unprecedented experiment, his new “franglais” show tackles the linguistic angst of his native Montreal head on. Switching back and forth between English and French, You're Gonna Rire was a box-office smash before he told the first joke. And now, after Wednesday's official premiere, his routine ripping into Quebec's franco-, anglo- and allophones has won over critics on both sides of the language divide.

Initially conceived as a single night at the 1,100-seat Olympia theatre, tickets went so fast that it has just been extended to 35 performances, with almost all of them sold out.

His decision to stage a truly bilingual show and his record of needling Quebec sovereigntists had generated some controversy. He declared the show would be 50.5% in English and 49.5% in French, a sly nod to the results of the 1995 sovereignty referendum result.

In past French performances he has drawn laughter and scattered boos by “teasing” separatists. “There are two kinds of Quebecers,” he told a 2009 French-language gala at Montreal's Just For Laughs festival. “There are educated, cultivated, well-raised Quebecers, then there are the ones who voted Yes.” He said Jacques Parizeau's referendum-night speech blaming his loss on “the ethnic vote” made him realize, as an Indo-Canadian, how close he had come to slavery. He said he could have lived with that if not for the fact his master would likely be poorer and less educated than him. “I'm worried my only job would be to go to the mailbox once a month to see if the cheque's arrived,” he joked.

‘I am a Montrealer. I was born here, and I've lived in French as much as in English'

Some fretted that You're Gonna Rire would contribute to the erosion of French in Quebec. TV host Julie Snyder, wife of media mogul Pierre-Karl Péladeau, compared the comic's “franglais” to the bastardization made famous by the buffoonish Quebec film character Elvis Gratton.

But judging from the reviews in Montreal newspapers Thursday, Sugar Sammy has successfully navigated the linguistic and political minefield.

La Presse had his picture on the front page with the headline “Full Bon!” The newspaper's critic Chantal Guy said the comic “perfectly represents the Montreal of today, its multiculturalism and its bilingualism, with its strengths and its paradoxes.”

The more nationalist Le Devoir was also won over, with Fabien Deglise, describing the show as a reflection of Montreal's diverse and complex identity. His subject matter may skirt disaster, the critic wrote, but he pulls it off because of his Montreal, immigrant roots, his French education (under Bill 101 he had no choice) and his “crazy charm.” Le Journal de MONTRÉAL hailed his command of the “universal language of laughter” while Annie-Soleil Proteau on Radio-Canada called the show “practically perfect.”

On the English side, The Gazette's comedy critic Bill Brownstein hailed the show as a unique Montreal cultural and sociological experience: “Like so many other Montrealers, he sees the world through a multicultural lens. And he loves it.”

With a successful international career, Sugar Sammy could get by fine without a Montreal audience. With an HBO Canada special and a best-selling comedy DVD to his name, he performs around the world in four languages — English, French, Punjabi and Hindi. But his attachment to the city remains strong.

He grew up in Montreal's Côte-des-Neiges neighbourhood, one of the most ethnically diverse in the country. “I am a Montrealer. I was born here, and I've lived in French as much as in English,” he said last fall during an appearance on the popular TV talk show Tout le monde en parle. “My heart is here in Montreal.”

After announcing his plan for a bilingual show, he told La Presse there was method to his seeming madness. “It's going to be very funny to play with the two solitudes,” he said, “and maybe also bring them together by showing that even if there is a little division, it is starting little by little to disappear, especially among the younger generation.”

It is a concept that could work only in Montreal, and the fact that he has pulled it off so successfully should give the language hawks pause. Maybe the city isn't going to hell after all; it's just evolving. And instead of getting out their rulers to measure the lettering on English signs, they should buy tickets to You're Gonna Rire and catch a glimpse of the real Montreal.

PHOTO : John Kenney / Postmedia News