THEATRE: Stephen Gray
SOMETHING about Pieter-Dirk Uys is a lesson to us all. The biggest laugh he draws in Truth Omissions is about English speaking — that there is so little of it on TV these days, no one knows what’s going on anymore. This is his licence to keep developing his sly slanging act which has come to fill the gap, the theatre of news.
His special mix has come to include now historic deflations, surely based on the purest loathing. Those still lethal portraits of now-criminal jokers — a past president braaiing his wors and a foreign affairs minister pouring his KWV — appear in the original sketches and updated in terminal denial, vengefully condemned before the bar of truth.
His mood can be plain daffy: the latest strategy of that survivor, Noelle Fine — toyitoying to buy off the blacks — illustrates an endearing South African resourcefulness, with unerase-able racist cliches too.
The country’s most successful stand-up comedian has matured that appalling movieslut, Evita Bezuidenhout — and these days which is she and which is Uys? Her pudgy, balding creator even explains his act, stripping down to garters … then re-dresses to make drag work the more dangerously.
Their verbal dexterity is legendary. Some of their quick cracks (“democracy is a wonderful thing if you don’t over-do it”; “my conscience is clear as I’ve never used it”) have entered the vernacular.
The gags about Connie Mulder’s lips have been a standby for 20 years. More topical cracks abound: “Castro-enteritis”. The secret is to keep up the bombardment from all quarters.
Simply outrageous is to have bossy Evita organising Mandela’s trip as he leaves England for France. On a cellphone from the auditorium to John Major’s wife, discussing Margaret Thatcher: “Has the mad cow now left No 10?”
Fielding questions with Philemon, his affirmative action feed (Professor Mavuso no less), he takes daredevil risks. Surely no other local performer has ever — rather sadistically — so baited his legion fans. But then, how many did vote for the Nats, after all?
Our genius entertainer shows the answer: no one admits. Followed by the deepest laughs of recognition, and complicity. There is the lesson.
Truth Omissions is at the Johannesburg Civic Theatre until July 27