Alex Sudheim
`Comedy is the new rock ‘n roll” goes the catchphrase of the moment. Young standups across the country are provoking audiences with a scabrous brand of humour that gleefully pokes and digs at society’s guilty secrets. As with the early days of rock ‘n roll, there is a spirit of anarchic, anti-establishment zeal; a keen desire to tear down safe, conservative facades and get to the ugly truth underneath.
Yet the tradition of the comedian as social commentator and moral satirist – the kid who cries out at the naked Emperor – is certainly an old one. Swift, Rabelais, Twain, Celine and Lenny Bruce are but a few throughout history who made use of wry, biting humour to expose and condemn ignorance and hypocrisy.
Underlying the caustic wit and stinging irony of the great satirists is a kind of hopeless idealism, a longing for a just and peaceful world that can never be. Instead, we have this one, and from one’s simulataneous embrace and revulsion towards it is born the black humour which is as much tragedy as it is comedy. As Lenny Bruce once said of his art: “People should be taught what is, not what should be. All my humour is based on destruction and despair. If the whole world were tranquil, without disease and violence, I’d be standing in the breadline – right back of J Edgar Hoover.”
South Africa recently experienced a sudden surge in popular demand for this hard-hitting type of comedy, and young standups like John Vlismas and Alyn Adams have indeed risen to quasi rock-star status. Capitalising on the public hunger for talented stand-ups, Smirnoff have concocted a potent cocktail of comedians in the International Comedy Roadshow.
Currently running at Durban’s Playhouse, the Roadshow combines the talents of top South African comedians with a handful of overseas funnymen, and, despite a rather cumbersome format, pulls off the whole affair with aplomb.
The concept is a bold one, with eight comedians taking the stage between manic bursts of lunatic gibberish from hyperactive audience-baiting English MC Martin Davis. The advantage of this format is that no one performer has enough time to get boring, having to condense their act into a frantic 15 minutes each.
The enormous risk, of course, is that of repetition, with many comics often milking the same topic for laughs. Dr Zuma, Lesotho, Clinton and (yawn) sex feature in just about every repertoire, allowing one to wonder whether these guys couldn’t try to be a bit more original in their choice of subject-matter. All too often it becomes painfully difficult to distinguish the comic from some dime-a- dozen wiseguy with a vaguely humorous take on what he read in the newspaper.
Of the South Africans, it was Vlismas and Adams who acquitted themselves most admirably. Foregoing the outdated approach of stringing along a bunch of rude jokes, both base their material on acute observation of the world around them. Vlismas’s hyper-accelerated verbal assault, studded with inspired spontaneous cracks and wild physical contortions is a masterpiece of jangled- nerve millennial angst and nihilistic glee.
Adams adopts a more languid style, strolling about with casual insouciance, his wry, acid remarks subtly hidden in his apparent nonchalance. He expertly removes one of society’s wriggling worms of hypocrisy and holds it up to the light for merciless inspection: “… Isn’t it funny how everyone was so shocked by Toks van der Linde’s racial slur in New Zealand?” he drawls. “Oh no!” he cries in mock horror. “Racism in rugby? What next – gay hairdressers?”
Nick Wilty, from the UK, also puts on a fine display of low-key, anecdotal humour, mixing strange tales of his never-ending travels with gentle wit. “Having just turned 30,” he says, “and more recently 38 – I’m still a bloody fit bloke. The other day I went on an 11-mile run. I was running after my youth – I had him all nicely tied to the bed and the next thing I know, he was gone.”
On the whole, the Smirnoff International Comedy Roadshow falls slightly short of the sustained flow of high-level creative madness it promises to be. All too often the opportunity to be really daring and radical is missed, with most comedians opting for the tried-and-trusted method of raising laughs. So maybe you’ll only split one side, but there are some ace moments of truly inspired wayward wit.
After its Durban run, the Smirnoff Comedy Roadshow moves to the Baxter in Cape Town where it runs from October 19 to 31