One of the hottest sensations at this year’s Smirnoff International Comedy Festival at the Baxter Theatre has to be Canada’s Phil Nicol, whose madcap antics in the Danger Zone (read: “adult humour”) have won big if baffled audiences.
I would describe your act as “in-your-face gay”. On stage you virtually proposition male patrons and, well, shove your back and front ends into the front rows. Comments?
Well, actually I’m not gay! I see my stage character as very confused –more schizoid than gay — and my aim is to disorientate the audience. I want them to ask, is he or isn’t he? To make the audience a bit uncomfortable, a bit angry, a bit frightened — to make them run the full range of emotions — that’s what I want to do.
Why?
I think there’s a much more interesting level of humour beneath the standard funny-guy telling well-honed jokes. I take the audiences on a journey with my character, forcing them to ask questions about him. It’s about entertainment, but to buy into what I’m doing, disorientation is good … Also, I like sexual ambiguity. I want to force people to stop judging by sexual difference.
You’ve performed your routines worldwide since leaving your native Toronto for London. How is your stage character received elsewhere?
Often very badly. At the Edinburgh Festival I was ripped apart by the critics for being homophobic and misogynistic … I enjoyed the fact that I was misleading them. They didn’t understand the level of irony I was working at.
You say your character is confused and ambiguous, but about a third way into the material the gay aspect becomes hard to avoid. For a largely straight South African audience, this level of outedness is perhaps quite salutary. What happens to the ambiguity you talk of?
Possibly the ambiguity gets lost in a 15-minute slot, instead of being one strand in my usual 40-minute set. Also I need to be very high-energy in my slot in this show — I come on before the end — and you need to hit the audience with a big stick to keep the energy level flowing.
You use music to hilarious, upsetting effect. What element does this lend your comedy?
I began my career in 1988 as the guitar player in the musical-comedy trio Corky and the Juice Pigs, with whom I toured all over the States. Music softens my character’s profile. It adds variety, and you can use it to disorientate — play them my own weird songs — and then make them comfortable, as when I play versions of my I’m the Only Gay Eskimo song as done by Dylan, Morrissey, Elvis, Björk …
Overseas comics here begin with a disadvantage — they don’t know the local idiom or issues. How do you find Cape Town audiences?
Very polite! Very open, quite sophisticated and educated … Yes, I begin carefully, and by the end of the run will be pretty loud and risqué as I become more comfortable with them.
A final word?
About the gay thing. I think I’m not gay because I haven’t found the right man yet. Can you put that in?
The details
The festival runs at Cape Town’s Baxter Theatre Complex until October 6. Bookings at Computicket. Tel: 082 495 8815.