An Audience With Pieter-Dirk Eish!
***** Uys is steeds ’n tour de force
– Herman Lategan, Die Burger, 10 November 2015
An Audience with Pieter-Dirk Eish
Theatre on the Bay, Kampsbaai
Pieter-Dirk Uys het oor die dekades heen meer as 7 000 eenmanvertonings opgevoer. Hierdie resensent het hom op die verhoog gesien sedert die vroeë tagtigerjare, sy loopbaan gevolg vandat hy ongeveer 35 jaar oud was, tot nou, op 70.
Daar was meestal uitstekende opvoerings, maar omdat die man oor die jare so produktief was, was daar soos met alle flukse akteurs (ook maar mens!) wisselvallige ordinêre aanbiedings. Hulle was in die minderheid.
Met sy jongste eenmanstuk, en as iemand wat al die meeste, indien nie amper ál sy werk gesien het nie, kan ’n mens met vertroue sê dié meester van satire is op sy kruin. An Audience with Pieter-Dirk Eish is ’n tour de force aangebied deur ’n gesoute akteur wat seepglad en selfversekerd stoksielalleen vir ongeveer ’n uur en ’n half ’n vol ouditorium mesmeriseer.
Om hom in hierdie vertoning te sien was soos om ’n meesterklas in intelligente politieke satire en improvisasie by te woon.
Hy is in der waarheid ’n virtuoos as dit by woordvaste ad libitum kom, iets waarmee baie verhoogkunstenaars gereeld sukkel.
Verder kom hy met ’n ferm en genuanseerde kennis van die land onder apartheid — hy en Evita Bezuidenhout was immers daar. Saam het hulle lag-lag teen die regime baklei. Bitter min van vandag se banale, selfingenome en opgepofte satirici, skerpskertsers of dramaturge kan daarop aanspraak maak.
Die stuk ontvou naatloos soos volg: Daar is verskeie genommerde bokse op die verhoog. In elke karton skuil ’n karakter. In sommige is daar selfs twee, soos met Evita Bezuidenhout en Angela Merkel, of Evita en Juju (Julius Malema). O wee, die bittersoet en heuningdik ironie.
Dan vra hy mense uit die gehoor om ’n boksnommer te kies. Die eerste paartjie is twee laatkommers, en hulle kies 75. Hy val weg met sy ondervindings daardie jaar (1975) met sensuur. Dan vra hy of daar born-frees in die gehoor is, ook mense wat hom dalk die eerste keer op die verhoog sien, en mense wat gay en trots daarop is.
Hy verander tjoeftjaf in verskeie van sy beminde karakters — die kugel Ja-Nowell Fine, Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu — maar ook sy ysingwekkende en perfekte interpretasie van Jacob Zuma was soos ’n uitgeholde Halloween-pampoen vir ons koggel en lag.
Maar dis toe Evita Bezuidenhout Juju die smalenderwyse pop uithaal en hom begin wieg soos ’n baba dat ’n sidderende doodse stilte oor die gehoor toesak. ’n Mens kon sweer iewers het die geluid van ’n geweer wat oorgehaal word weergalm. Boem!
To 28 November
A Q&A with Pieter- Dirk Eish!
– Karen Rutter, Cape Times, 6 November 2015
After sold-out seasons in Cape Town and Johannesburg earlier this year PIETER-DIRK UYS returns to Theatre on the Bay. He starts in trousers and ends up in a dress. His sketches see him morphing from character to character featuring “something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue!”
What makes An Audience with Pieter-Dirk Eish! different from other PDU shows?
There are 20 numbered boxes on stage and we can only manage to cover seven in each show. The audience chooses the numbers. Which means every show is different and I never know what’s coming next. That’s like doing a tango in front of a firing squad!
How does it feel to be 70 and still do seven 90-minute shows every week?
Having done over seven thousand performances alone on stage all over the world, I still regard each performance as the first one and the last one. So it stays fresh and topical. Sometimes though I do feel like a 45 year old racing car driver in a 70 year old racing car!
And also an eighth show on Sundays?
Yes, every Sunday I am at Evita se Perron in Darling with Tannie Evita praat Kaktus — which celebrates its 20th year in 2016.
You’ve been performing your one-man format since 1982. Some people say you keep doing the same show.
My theatre audience appreciates the sitcom-feel of my shows in which I use a chorusline of familiar popular characters to reflect the reality of the political and social ups and downs that create a new satirical turmoil each time. Evita Bezuidenhout, Nowell Fine, Desmond Tutu, Wininie Mandela, Madiba, Mrs Petersen, Bambi Kellermann, PW Botha, Pik Botha do re-emerge and adapt to add a new dimension to the long walk to freedom that we all share. But yes, there will be some people who will think nothing changes. For them I weave in a Zuma, a firepool, a Mugabe and whoever’s on page one of the day’s newspaper.
Do you think you are still funny?
I don’t think I have ever been funny ha-ha. I still envy comedians who can fill a show with gags and punchlines and jokes. I sometimes think the truth can be funnier. There is a difference for me between comedy and humour. Comedy is the joke that you only remember in order to tell it to someone else. Humour is sometimes not at all “funny” and often very personal. Possibly the ability to laugh at one’s fear and make that fear less fearful? Apartheid was never funny, but the hypocrisy and arrogance in a line like “there are two things I can’t stand about South Africa; apartheid and the blacks” very pertinent to the times, but still uncomfortably familiar and very horribly funny.
How does it feel to be white and critisising black political incompetence with humour?
The red line of racism is very close to the tip of my shoe. I will not cross it. I have fought it all my life. So, yes, I do not feel comfortable doing black politicians by depending on funny accents or bad grammar. White incompetence is easier because I belong to that family of “us”. Some of my “eternal” characters go beyond colour: Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela , Winnie Mandela, Mrs Petersen and yes, happily now, Jacob Zuma trying to articulate his telephone numbers!
How do you define satire in South Africa today?
It used to be defined as “tragedy plus time equals satire”. Not anymore. What happens today must be skewered within minutes. Thanks to social media and the instant press of that magic send-button which allows everyone to be a satirist, a journalist, a critic, a president and a god.
Your advice to Trevor Noah?
As I would say to anyone else in the public eye: don’t press send when pissed — or pissed-off!
Will Evita Bezuidenhout fall?
As long as she doesn’t demand a raise in fees, she will remain the most famous white woman in South Africa. I am very relieved I never have to meet her face to face.
You seem to enjoy performing female characters more than the others.
As an actor I do prefer my female characters, because they have so much more to offer in gesture, seduction, appearance and courage. Margaret Thatcher said: if you want something said ask a man; if you want something done ask a woman.
Will you retire?
Why? As long as there is an audience, I cannot wait to be there to entertain them. But reinventing ones product is also an important step in the right direction. I have a new show for 2016 that is different to anything I have ever done before. That’s what being 70 means: the audition is over; the disease-to-please is cured. No need to prove, just to improve.
You are also rehearsing a new musical while performing Eish! every evening?
In 1978 my play Die van Aardes van Grootoor broke the sound barrier of applause. It is has since become a legendary delight for audiences, English and Afrikaans. Now we have the musical! Godfrey Johnson has composed a feast of songs and drama and I will direct the production with a company of young daring talent to open at Theatre on the Bay on December 18 with previews from December 11.
* An Audience with Pieter-Dirk Eish! is at Theatre on the Bay until November 28, 021 438 3301, www.theatreonthebay.co.za
**** Bear the brunt of genius
– Leon van Nierop, The Citizen, 23 September 2015
There is simply no one better than Pieter-Dirk Uys for the times we find ourselves in.
In this time of load shedding, a weak rand, political corruption, incompetence and the devastating Springbok loss, we desperately need humour — more specifically, Pieter-Dirk Uys’s special brand. He is the only comedian who can still make us laugh at the problems that beset our country, although it may feel as if you are swallowing barbed wire.
I have seen several versions of this show before, and the opening night I attended, Pieter-Dirk was in top form. To be honest: I have never attended a show of his where there wasn’t a standing ovation and this one was no different. I was also privileged enough to have attended his earliest ground-breaking shows in the Space Theatre in Cape Town in the early ’70s, so I have indeed witnessed the evolution of his genius as a comedian.
Like his previous shows under the same name, there are about 15 boxes on stage with numbers on them. Pieter walks onto the stage, nonchalant, charming, smiling and energetic in spite of his 70 years and asks the audience to choose a box. But beware if the house lights go on. He will spot you if you try to hide! On the particular evening I attended, he suddenly asked: “Who here is proud and out and gay?” Interestingly enough several hands froze in mid-air with only one brave gentleman in the front row putting up his entire hand to choose a box.
The success of Uys’s performance lies in his wit and ability to improvise and keep the show in line with what is happening. Heaven help the Springboks in his forthcoming shows! One by one Pieter pulls out costumes and changes into well-known characters in front of our eyes. But it is tannie Evita that is his and the audience’s favourite. She comes off spectacularly, to say the least.
So if you are in the doldrums for whatever reason, this brilliant show will console, entertain and invigorate you.
Uys is back with another pick-a-box bonanza
Pieter-Dirk Uys puts the eish! back into entertainment with pick-a-box bonanza at Montecasino from September 8 to October 4.
– Artslink, 31 August 2015
As he prepares to turn 70 in sensational style this September, satirist extraordinaire Pieter-Dirk Uys is placing the power squarely in Johannesburg audiences’ hands. Now, if only the politicians he lampoons so mercilessly would follow suit…
Uys’s smash hit show An Audience with Pieter-Dirk Eish! returns by massive public demand to invade the main stage of Pieter Toerien’s Montecasino Theatre in Fourways from 8 September to 4 October 2015, celebrating more than three decades of theatrical mirth, mayhem, moegoes and make-up.
But this show has a special twist. Over the years Uys has created more than 80 different characters, from politicians to kugels, icons to aikonas, and will draw from this rogues’ gallery in laying out 15 numbered mystery boxes on stage, each containing a different character from his vast satirical cluster.
The audience will choose which boxes to open, and thereby which characters this veteran entertainer and social commentator will slip into — each providing a telling glimpse of who we are, where we come from and where we are going as a nation. No two shows will ever be alike, making for an anything-goes lucky dip of laugh-out-loud observational humour.
Using humour as his trusty weapon of mass distraction, Uys will morph from a Botha into a Bezuidenhout, from a Zuma via a Zille into a Merkel. From the beloved Tannie Evita to her debauched sister Bambi, from Nowell Fine to Mama Winnie and Grace Mugabe, from the Arch to Mother Theresa -– they’re all there, waiting to be unpacked, unpicked and paraded on the red carpet.
The news of the day will be cannily reflected in this cracked mirror of a rainbow nation smiling at the familiar, shocked by the obvious and, above all, laughing at itself.
Uys will be turning 70 on 28 September 2015 — in the middle of the Johannesburg return season of An Audience with Pieter-Dirk Eish! Yet, with some 35 one-man shows and in the region of 7 000 stage appearances under his belt, not to mention several plays, books, films and local and international awards, he has no desire to slow down.
He says: “If 70 feels this good, I’m looking forward to the next 10-plus years on the stages and screens of South Africa!”
Performances of An Audience with Pieter-Dirk Eish! are on Tuesdays to Fridays at 20h00, with shows at 17h00 and 20h00 on Saturdays, and on Sundays at 15h00.
Tickets range between R100 and R170 in price, for an opportunity to see this national treasure in action and to laugh at – and away – your troubles. The show is rated PG (parental guidance advised). Book through Computicket or call the Montecasino Theatre at 011 511 1988.
Pieter-Dirk Uys chats with Samm Marshall on SABC2’s Morning Live
22 March 2015
Pieter-Dirk Uys’s show, An Audience With Pieter-Dirk Eish!, is currently playing at Pieter Toerien’s Montecasino Theatre in Johannesburg until 12 April 2015
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