Review of the South African comedian on tour in the UK

The standard stance for male comedians in their 30s is to wonder if they’re ready for proper adulthood yet, as they see their contemporaries with real jobs settling down.

Well, not for Schalk Bezuidenhout. The globetrotting South African is such an old soul, he’s more than ready to leapfrog that stage entirely and prepare for retirement. He’s already joined a lawn bowls team where he’s half the age of everyone else and freely confesses to being prudish. He can barely say the word ‘nipple’ out loud, half-mouthing it as if it’s shameful; admits he’d be terrible in a foursome; and describes his one and only encounter with cocaine, the result of peer pressure, as an absolute disaster.

The innocence makes him endearing, an attribute established as soon as he comes on as his own opening act, persisting with the semi-pretence that he’s two comedians across the whole night.

However, the material isn’t quite as vanilla as his demeanour suggests. The stand-out routine – if only for the horrific imagery it evokes – revolves around how he had to have an emergency circumcision at the age of 13, with the comic making a graphic cartoon reenactment of his errant foreskin. While joking that this isn’t quite the big emotional trauma dump expected of solo comedy shows these days, it could still bring tears to the eyes for a different reason. 

Nevertheless, he doesn’t quite embody the trope he sets up that Afrikaans would rather regret an inappropriate joke than not make it. An Oscar Pistorius gag is as much nostalgic as it is bad taste these days, and ending that circumcision routine with a wanking gag is pretty much to be expected.

He builds this up as the climax of the show, but then tags on a lengthy, gently nostalgic and evocatively described routine about the universal experience of school assemblies – a palate-cleaner, for sure.

This aside, the topic of whether he can keep up with the younger generations is what gives Bezuidenhout his show title, and the answer is probably no, He’s befuddled by the concept of gluten-free communion wafers – a bit hack, this bit – as well as apparently buying into the scare story, much loved in some quarters, that children are identifying as cats and teachers are indulging them. 

Not that he’s jumping on the bandwagon – above all else, he’s a nice guy who wants to be tolerant – but can’t resist the silliness of the premise. And in a solid routine he mocks the intolerance of the apartheid-era oldies he now hangs out with making racist assumptions about the guy who stole his phone. 

It’s probably no surprise that cultural differences are this well-travelled comedian’s strong point, wryly commenting on Britons’ detached tolerance of certain types of madness and the counterintuitive fact that richer economies have more of a self-service culture.

Bezuidenhout’s delightful company and a deft storyteller, making as much as he can out of being effectively lightweight and middle-of-the-road, even if those characteristics might hold him back from making the leap from good comic to great artist. 

• Schalk Bezuidenhout: Keeping Up is touring the UK until October 27. Dates

Review date: 4 Oct 2024
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Brighton Komedia