Mars Ou Crève - Le Complexe, Lyon

Mars ou Crève at Le Complexe - Salle du Haut

At Le Complexe - Salle du Haut, we are thrilled to open our intimate upstairs room to Mars ou Crève, a sharp, high-velocity hour that thrives on proximity and surprise. In our space, the performer’s wit lands with precision—the quick pivots, the sly callbacks, the sudden bursts of physical comedy all play beautifully against the room’s close quarters and warm acoustics. Mars ou Crève approaches the idea of “survival” with a cosmic wink: the imagined pressures of a mission to Mars mirror the everyday turbulence of work, dating, family, and the infinite scroll. The result, for our audience, is an experience that feels both larger-than-life and disarmingly personal. The staging is lean and nimble, built for our stage: minimal props, purposeful lighting cues, and a premium on storytelling, crowd work, and rhythm. We have long championed comics who fuse intelligence with mischief, and Mars ou Crève belongs to that tradition—bold in theme, joyful in execution, and perfectly at home in a room where every reaction, every breath, and every laugh ping around the walls with electric clarity.

The artist’s current momentum

From our vantage point as hosts and curators, the artist behind Mars ou Crève is in a moment of lively momentum, bringing fresh material honed throughout a season of club nights and festival slots. The set is textured with new bits that we have seen sharpen to diamond points: bursts of observational satire one minute, then tight storytelling the next. Our audiences can expect recent sketches that have become word-of-mouth favorites among regulars—pieces like Terraformation Express, a whirlwind tour of corporate jargon transplanted to an airless red planet; Panne d’Oxygène Sociale, mapping the awkwardness of small talk when everyone’s wearing metaphorical spacesuits; and Le Brief du Commandant, a masterclass in deadpan authority figures and mission-speak. There’s a nimble play with sound and silence, with pauses that let laughter roll and tag-on lines that catch you off guard. On social feeds and in late-night clips, these ideas have taken on a life of their own; in our room, they connect even more strongly, because the performer can ride the wave of the crowd, modulate on the fly, and let the jokes expand into something spontaneous and alive.

What excites us most in Mars ou Crève is the way the show builds its own comic universe and then lets the audience live inside it for an hour. The structuring call-backs stitch the evening together—early gags discreetly return in new guises—while fresh, topical references keep the set in the now. You’ll hear new sections such as Station-Service Orbitale, a brilliantly absurd meditation on errands and logistics at interplanetary scale; Mode Avion Éternel, a riff on disconnection as both curse and cure; and Manuel de Survie Sentimentale, which tracks the hilarity and heartbreak of modern romance as if it were a checklist for a habitat module. In the room at Le Complexe - Salle du Haut, the performer’s interaction with the front rows, the playful asides tossed to the balcony, and the sly nods to local Lyon life land with an immediacy you can’t get on a screen. Our team has dialed in the light and sound to spotlight these turns—the crisp fade for a character shift, a soft wash to frame an intimate confession—so that every beat of Mars ou Crève resonates. It is clever, mischievous, and unexpectedly human, the kind of hour that reminds us why up-close comedy, in a room like ours, feels like rocket fuel.