Two years after taking to the stage in his first one-man show, Marc Lottering is the most popular performer on Cape Town’s burgeoning stand-up comedyscene RyanFortune
It’s an unseasonably cool Thursday evening in Cape Town, but On Broadway in Green Point is packed to capacity for Marc Lottering, the lank-limbed, bushy-haired comedian who seems unstoppable in hisrise to popular success. In character as Smiley, thevelvet-voiced minibus taxi “guard”, he’s telling theaudience about how he likes the fact that black people, “darkies”, spend all their money instead ofsaving it in banks. “Fok First National, die SealyPosturepedic gee befokte interest [Fuck First National, the Sealy Posturepedic gives fucking good interest],” he says, to thegut-busting delight of the crowd. Lottering gets awaywith this extremely un- PC generalisation-as-joke because Smiley, like all the characters in hissketches, is instantly recognisable as a typical CapeTown personality, the kind who views the world ingeneral absolutes. And besides, the performer himselfis a suave equal opportunity comedian who gets audiences convulsing with laughter with an arsenal of razor-sharp jokes about the city’s porn-loving mayor, Penny Heyns’s creeping swimsuit, veteran radio announcer Dmitri Jegels, Sonja Herholdt’s uncensoredcomeback, white people and their dogs, coloured people and their hair issues, the immortal TV newsreader Riaan Cruywagen, the Simunye TV presenters’ IQ andOprah Winfrey’s hair products. Then, unusually for astand-up comedian, he’ll sing like a nightingale whileplaying the piano with serious aplomb. It amounts to atreasure chest of material honed in four one-man showsat Cape Town’s mainstream theatres and countless performances at venues on the Cape Comedy Collectivecircuit. In just two years, Lottering has earned the adoration of a large number of fans who, liketonight’s On Broadway crowd, are captivated by hisunrivalled ability to make them laugh at their own uniquely South African foibles.
“There’s a crazy energy going on in my life right now,” Lottering tells me after the show, an hour-longcompilation of his best jokes to date. “But I’m okaywith it. It’s just me.” He’s referring to the factthat he’s poised on the brink of making his biggestattempt yet to impress himself upon the nationalconsciousness with From the Cape Flats with Love,which opened at the Johannesburg Civic Theatre onOctober 17. It’s a process made all the more daunting by the fact that Lottering’s current status as a hotcommodity, the kind of performer whose shows sell outwithin hours of being announced, is largelyattributable to the distinctly Cape Flats flavour ofhis material.
“Not only am I writing all new material for my characters and structuring the show in a way that I’ve never done before,” he says, “but I’m also having tograpple with whether this or that joke, this or thatstory, will go across to an audience who have no ideaof what life is like on the Cape Flats. Will a Jo’burgaudience ever be able to understand what Auntie Merle is all about?” Nonetheless, Lottering is breathing a bit easier after positive viewer response to his three-episode stint onSABC3’s new Saturday night Comedy Showcase. No oneconfused him with the boring psychology student inRoberta Durrant’s e.tv sitcom Big Okes. Another majorconfidence-booster for Lottering is that he is beingdirected by David Kramer. “I could easily choose to not have a director,” he explains, “but I felt that I needed someone who couldtell me honestly in rehearsal whether I was funny. Andas soon as you have to explain to someone why you’refunny then you’re in trouble. Secondly, David is notcoming in with a director’s guide to comedians fromthe Cape Flats. He owes me nothing. Everything he’sdone so far has worked nationally and I believe thatif I have an interest to see how my Cape Flats frameof reference is going to go across, then David is the proactive choice.”
Lottering’s trajectory to fame has been so steep that many of Cape Town’s theatre critics have been caughtcompletely off- guard. The confusion of those who handout plaudits and awards has been further compounded bythe fact that his shows defy neat theatricalconventions. If he plays the piano and sings, does hestop being a stand-up comedian? When he goes intolengthy character sketches, does it make him an actorin a one-person play? Unsettling though it may seem,Lottering takes this imbalance between his box- officesuccess and what the critics have not said completelyin his stride. “There are comedians who fire from the hip and everyminute there’s a new gag, but I’m not that type ofperformer. I tell stories that are funny, I go intocharacters, I re- enact characters and experiences andI use a lot of hyperbole. I can appear at one venue asa comedian, at another as a storyteller or for Roberta Durrant as an actor. It really doesn’t matter to me.But whatever title a journalist chooses to give me, Idon’t want that title to shut me off from unsettlingyou. If you walk out of one of my shows saying thatI’m not a comedian because I made you feel kak thenI’m okay with that.” From where Lottering is at right now, the first stirrings of the writing bug are a million miles away. However, for the sake of honest journalism, he digsdeep into his memory banks. “Well, I never sat down and said there’s this gap inthe entertainment market and now I’m drawing up afive-year plan on how I intend to fill it. My writingwas something that had been coming along since 1996 orso, when I worked on Baby and Ain’t Misbehavin’.”
In 1996, while working at an advertising agency and with minimal theatrical experience (a high school playand being involved with a youth drama outreachprogramme in the mid-1980s), Lottering auditioned for arole in Baby, a poppy musical that played to fullhouses at the Nico Malan Theatre. It was his decisionto go into advertising after law studies at the University of Cape Town thatsteered him toward the stage. “At the agency I met many artistic people and was involved in many of the creative strategies,” heexplains, “but I soon realised that I wanted to be onthe other side. Instead of being the person doing thebooking, I wanted to be the one being booked. Thinkingabout it now, it was very nave of me, but sincesinging came very naturally to me, I auditioned forthe lead role in Baby.” Commenting on the fact that his performance in Baby won him the 1996 Cape Times theatre award for bestactor in a musical, Lottering is hilariouslyself-effacing: “It was very easy to impress, because I was the only black person in the cast.” Lottering followed up his award-winning big stage debut with a role in Ain’t Misbehavin’, the FatsWaller musical that captures a time when blackAmericans would perform before white audiences, verydocile and all, but afterwards pull out all the stops.
It also served as the best introduction to Cape Town’s entertainment industry. “With Ain’t Misbehavin’ I got to work with people like Tina Schouw, Stella Mgaba, Basil Appollis and SofiaFoster,” says Lottering. “These were all people whohad paid their dues, each one had their own story andthey’ve all remained firm friends. I consider myselfvery lucky because I couldn’t have asked for a betterintroduction to the industry.” From these theatre veterans Lottering also came to understand how rife politics was in Cape Town’sentertainment industry. It led, he says, to the quietknowledge that he would have to set about carving hisown niche in showbiz. “I realised that I didn’t want to be one of those people who sit backstage and complain about how thereare no roles that accurately reflect us, that’severyone in South Africa, and that I would eventuallyhave to sit down and write my own material. But ofcourse it’s very scary to perform alone, because you’re very vulnerable, no one else is to blame. It’sjust you and your responsibility to the audience. So I was just jotting stuff down every day and waiting for the right time to take the leap.”
A couple more musicals followed and then, in 1998,Lottering made his leap with After the Beep, acabaret-style salad of songs and stories from his earlier incarnation as the good son of a Pentecostalfamily living in Retreat on the Cape Flats. It ran atthe Coffee Lounge in central Cape Town to unexpectedcritical acclaim. More confident of his possibilities, in early 1999 Lottering joined the professional jokers comprisingthe Cape Comedy Collective, where he was to gainskills crucial to surviving on stage and in thebusiness of entertainment. “Of course I’ve developed my skills of observation,” he says. “I’d be lazy if I didn’t because that’s how Imake my money. So I’m constantly catching things thatI could develop into something for my show, a gesturethat someone makes with their hand, for example. “Whatever it is, if I’m still thinking about it three days later, I write it down and begin thinking about how Ican use it.”
Turned around in Lottering’s supremely intelligent head and packaged for performance with unrivalledskill, the mundane realities of a South Africanexistence become food for a new and richer way oflooking at ourselves. More importantly, you don’t have to be from the Cape Flats to get the picture. From the Cape Flats with Love runs at the Pieter Roos Theatre at Johannesburg’s Civic Theatre Complex until December 3. For information call: (011) 403 3408. You can also see Marc Lottering on e.tv in the sitcom Big Okes on Tuesdays at 7.30pm