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An  Audience with

Pieter-Dirk Eish!

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REVIEWS OF AN AUDIENCE WITH PIETER-DIRK EISH!  in CAPE TOWN  

 — OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2012

**** Eish! What a ride. Delicious conspiracy of positive thoughts

– Theresa Smith, Cape Argus Tonigh, 6 November 2012

The name of this show really says it all. It’s an audience with Pieter-Dirk Uys and eish, what a ride.

Uys starts off the evening on a very warm and chatty note, getting to know his audience — this is not the kind of comedy show where the audience is picked on for the laughs. As per usual, Uys reserves his satire for the politicians.

He’s got 15 boxes on the stage and depending on what box the audience members pick, that is the character he gives you.

We are talking more than 30 years of stage shows that Uys can draw on, so it is a vast array, but the wonder is how he manages to string all of it together into a coherent whole by using his own life story to weave it all together.

He never hesitates, companionably drawing the audience into his stories, making us part of his little conspiracy to point out other people behaving badly.

With a few strokes of make-up Uys transforms into un-PC Jewish kugel Noelle Fine, or dons a Madiba shirt and sad little gray wig to become Madiba’s last ex-warder.

Audience comments are woven into the fabric of the show and pathos and sarcasm are dolloped out in equal measure (though never at the audience).

There are sly jokes about contemporary politicians and barbed quips fly thick and fast.

If you watch the local Twitter feed every night you will probably eventually get a glimpse of all the characters as he encourages people to leave their cellphones on “to google” the references they don’t catch.

Those with excellent memories who are familiar with Uys’s work over the years might find some of the patter familiar from previous shows.

Like the one box which gives us a potted version of a scary rhyme about South African presidents of yore, again all strung around Uys’s own political awakening through the years. Like a string of nasty pearls we get these bon mots which would be funny if they weren’t all true. (Then again, another night’s performance may give you five completely unseen characters, it really is a case of pick a box.)

The whole show is like that: funny until you realise he is not really making a joke. Okay, actually he is making a joke because he is trying to get you to laugh at what you don’t take seriously enough.

But, if you really think about it, politics shouldn’t be a joke — it is real life — and Uys tries to draw attention to the realities of South African politics by making it less scary.

For all that he is drawing your attention to the dark underbelly, Uys manages to bring across a hopeful note as well, calling himself “a glass-half-full kind of person” and encouraging the audience to leave with that mentality rather than merely concentrating on all the bad.

It would’ve been easier to slag everyone off and preach doom and gloom, but Uys manages to imbue his performance with a positive message without being corny, which is a hard thing to do, but he does it with his usual aplomb.

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REVIEW: AN AUDIENCE WITH PIETER-DIRK EISH!

– Louisa Steyl, Tygerburger, 6 November 2012

Intimate, thought-provoking and spellbinding.

The three words I would best use to describe Pieter-Dirk Uys’ new show, An audience with Pieter-Dirk Eish!.

From the minute he walked on stage at the Baxter, I was in awe. As a Pieter-Dirk Uys virgin, having only seen him on the small screen, I was incredibly excited to see this theatre legend live.

And all at once I was reminded why I love theatre, why I love satire and why I love my country.

The concept for the show is that Pieter-Dirk Uys stands on stage with 15 boxes behind him. He asks the audience questions, and in turn, gives them the chance to choose a box.

Each box contains a surprise: either one of his many characters, a skit or a story.

We were graces with the presence of Madiba, Desmond Tutu and even Tannie Evita, but, of, course, every night would be different.

Pieter-Dirk Uys’ raw and brutally honest opinions give us the freedom to laugh at ourselves but also force us to take a good, long look at what is happening around us.

From jarring history lessons to comical looks at current affairs, Pieter-Dirk Uys brazen social commentary is what makes him impossible to ignore, but more importantly, impossible not to love.

If you only know Tannie Evita, or if you love all the other characters he brings to love, make an effort to go see An Audience with Pieter-Dirk Eish!.

The show runs at the Baxter Theatre until Saturday 17 November. Tickets are available through Computicket.

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Review: An Audience With Pieter-Dirk Eish!

– Jeremy Abbott, Cape Town Today, 1 November 2012

Firstly, any audience member expecting to see a new Evita show will be disappointed.

An Audience with Pieter-Dirk Eish! is literally that — Pieter Dirk onstage with no makeup (most of the time) talking about his life experiences growing up in South Africa and doing sketches of the various characters he has added to his repertoire over the years.

Only every night the show and characters will be different. You see, Pieter has 15 boxes on the stage behind him and each box contains its own story and character. He asks the audience a number of random questions during the course of the show, like “Are you gay?”, “Who is at the theatre for the first time?”, “Who’s thinking about leave the country?”, “Are there any politicians on the audience?” and based on the responses, a person is chosen who can pick a box to open. Thus the show changes every night.

What won’t change is you get to see a national treasure perform – and experience a history lesson that is funny, uplifting and sad at different times. Desmond Tutu will have you in stitches, the story of the Big Issues seller will inspire you, while Pieter-Dirk’s anecdote about his experiences as a young gay man with friends and relationships across the colour barrier is a jerking reminder of the country we once lived in.

But the show doesn’t only reflect upon the past — the sketch of Evita, now a cleaner in parliament, is also as stern reminder of the challenges we face in the present and future. But regardless of the content of the message, it is always conveyed with honesty, tongue in cheek humour and a twinkle in the eye.

On the opening night we enjoy Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela, Kgalema Motlhanthe, baby Julius Malema, PW Botha and Evita Bezuidenhout. I wonder who will come out of the box for your show…

An Audience With Pieter-Dirk Eish! is on at the Baxter Tuesdays to Saturdays at 8:00pm until the 17th of November. Ticket prices are R140.

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Review: An Audience With Pieter-Dirk Eish!

– Clifford Graham, The Monday Missile Dot Coza, 4 November 2012

Fifteen boxes, lined up on the stage, and Pieter-Dirk Uys. That’s all the visual required to make turn An Audience With Pieter-Dirk Uys into an evening to be talked about long after the fact.

Now in his sixties, Pieter-Dirk Uys can vividly recall the recent dark history of South Africa with ease, and is probably the most up to date person on current SA politics around (even if most of us have lost interest). He engages his audience, speaking to the young, the expat, the gay and the gatvol. Every so often, asking for someone to play Pick-a-Box. I wonder just how many people in the audience will have actually heard Bob Courtney’s Pick-a-Box on Springbok Radio? A number is chosen and from the box, a few items are taken and voila! Pieter- Dirk Uys transforms into one of the characters he is so famous for. I was delighted when on opening night, Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s box was chosen. Uys has a particular way with this impersonation.  

Of course at each performance there will have to be a default appearance by Evita Bezuidenhout, everyone loves to hate her. She’s now a cook at Luthuli House and a member of the ANC. But of course you knew that, all the Nats were verkleurmannetjies and blended so well into the background, never to be seen again. Away from the humour and satire we all have come to know and love, Pieter-Dirk Uys takes time out on a more serious note to share something of his own life with us. He recalls an incident from his student days at UCT filled with sadness and irony. It’s as though he is putting away all the characters he has used to point fingers at the government for all these years, and giving us the real Pieter-Dirk Uys. He is after all a South African with just as much pride, fear and cynicism about our country as the rest of us. Each performance will be different from the last, so no matter how much I tell you here, it won’t spoil the next show, but take a walk on the Dirkside, humour and a bit of introspection is a great force.

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BWW Reviews: Plenty of Laughs on the Cape Town Comedy Circuit

– David Fick, Broadway World, 3 November 2012

The comedy of Pieter-Dirk Uys is a ubiquitous feature of life in Cape Town — and one that is just as welcome. AN AUDIENCE WITH PIETER-DIRK EISH! also begins by establishing a friendly rapport with the audience, although this time it is because the audience is vital in choosing the line-up for the show, which is something of a "greatest hits" evening and features some of Uys's best loved characters and impersonations, linked by his own sharp philosophical insights into life in contemporary South Africa. Some of the audience members who were lucky enough to choose one of the 15 prepared skits that were represented by a number of boxes lined up on stage at the start of the show included a tourist from the UK, a couple of schoolgirls on an outing from a convent school in the area and a birthday boy. So this is a perfect outing for a special night, as you might find yourself with an extra special memory to help commemorate it.

Because of this approach to the show, the grouping of skits that each audience sees is unique. We were fortunate enough to see Uys's classic, beloved Evita Bezuidenhout character looking through some top secret files apparently discarded by the African National Congress; the full range of South African prime ministers; Archbishop Desmond Tutu; and — my personal favourite — the deliciously politically incorrect Noelle Fine, a white Jewish liberal who says the most awfully inappropriate things in a fine-tuned kugel accent.

Although the character is not likely to rear his head at every performance, the one act of the evening that did not work for me was the first one we saw, a prison warden who took care of Nelson Mandela while he was incarcerated during apartheid. It was the only skit of the evening where Uys’s comedy felt irrelevant and dated. That might sound like an odd criticism in a show that is composed largely of skits that are familiar to audiences who have seen Uys on stage before, but the other characters seemed to have something to say about the life we are living in South Africa right here and now, which is of course the very broad topic that Uys used to frame the satirical material written to link the set pieces together.

It is clear that the seriousness of South Africa's politics is as important to Uys now as it was during the days of apartheid and it was heartening to overhear some of the schoolgirls in the audience talking to their teacher as they left the theatre about the road to Mangaung and their intention to participate in the next election, which Uys had encouraged them to do mid-performance. Perhaps that is the measure of Uys's success in performance: political satire is aimed at shifting mindsets and lays down a challenge for the audience to re-examine the practice of their citizenship. The gauntlet laid down here was enthusiastically taken up.

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An audience with Pieter-Dirk Eish

– mycomedy.co.za, 31 October 2012

Each audience gets a unique show and random selection will guide its direction. But the consistent component is that no one is safe from humorous ridicule.

This is the fresh idea behind An Audience with Pieter-Dirk Eish, which opened at the Baxter Theatre in Cape Town this week.

Casually interacting with the audience, Pieter-Dirk Uys has one member select a box from the 15 he has on the stage. Within each box is a character and a historical narrative exploring the grim past, rocky future and sticky present of South Africa’s social troubles and political conundrums.

Many of the characters you will have seen before. But it’s the way Uys embodies each persona that confirms his status as a national theatrical treasure.

At one moment he is a coloured cop in 1976 who grapples with the dichotomy of rich whites and his own disenfranchised people. He also has to navigate the burning tyres of his own mind working for the fascist regime who continues to oppress.

In the simple act of donning a headscarf, he becomes the policeman’s sister, the recognisable Mrs Pieterson who laments the changing demographic of the Cape Flats. Talk of the Jews, Nigerians, Somalians, ANC — all point to the burdensome categorisation of the other that governs South Africans’ discourse.

Verwoerd and Bambi Kellerman. Angela Merkel and Desmond Tutu. Pick a box and out comes a new person or a new story illustrating white paranoia, aids awareness, sheer mockery and humanistic aspirations respectively.

Characters expose themselves and the quirks that make this country what it is. Some of these idiosyncrasies are inspiring. Others shame us.

Much of Uys’ commentary is not comedy. His truths are profound and often the crowd’s chuckles escape unwittingly in a desperate attempt to assuage the uneasiness. When the jokes are overt, like Kellerman depicting Malema’s penis size, there is a sigh of relief that allows a discharge of pent up social consciousness.

Forced removals, segregation, white flippancy are all interrogated.

It is a history lesson. A lecture. Uys has always been more than a simple performer, but rather an educator armed with a sharpened stick to stab into our fleshy apathy and denial.

Mbeki and Aids. A line up of apartheid leaders. They point to where we went wrong. Helen Suzman and Tutu show us how tenacity and integrity can help triumph over the madness and protect us against the deplorable future we face if the government continues in its current manner.

It’s a history lesson. And while much of the narrative is peppered with comedy, the show is an honest reflection of our young democracy, which is often not funny at all.

So while Uys gets giggles from poking fun at laughable politicians he reminds us quite seriously that the long road to Mangaung, savaged by political bandits, means we’ll be without a government who cares about its constituents until at least 2014.

It’s at this end point where he calls back the motivational characters from the night’s performance and reminds us that one needn’t hold political power to evoke change. We can all live a little better and do a little more to make this country a place for all.

Not just that we can, but that we must.

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