Ben Voss savages Human Nature

Using comedy to punt a serious message is a time-honoured tradition, and the obvious way for comedian Ben Voss to promote his support for wildlife conservation.
His job is to make us laugh, and doing it for a good cause is better than just stringing a collection of stories together to give us an amusing but ultimately meaningless time.
Finding the right balance between laughter and lecturing is one of the crucial elements, and the other is finding enough comic material in the subject you want to promote.
Benny Bushwhacker: Human Nature just about hits both targets as Voss plays a khaki-clad game ranger. The script written by John van de Ruit, author of the Spud books, is strong in witty word plays and entertaining innuendoes, and the production has a tight pace and fluidity thanks to director Janice Honeyman.
The action occurs in a compact setting designed like a boma, complete with camping chairs and wooden fencing. Voss plays a variety of characters as he builds up the back story, becoming his grandmother to recall how young Benny used to bunk off school and disappear into the bush. Then we meet the German investor who hires Benny to help create a private reserve in the Sabi region.
The script is a great vehicle for Voss to display his excellent skills at different accents, and he’s wonderful along the way as a Sandton housewife and an Afrikaner headmaster. My favourite character was Riley, the 17-year-old packed off to a bush camp and traumatised by the lack of Wi-Fi coverage. Voss captures the self-importance of youth superbly, and his like, whateva vocabulary has everyone in stitches.
The overall theme is the clash between mankind and the rest of nature, and the threat we pose to the survival of other species. There are a few occasions when the team work in their opinions quite strongly, like attacking the oft-touted argument that canned lion killing or trophy hunting actually support conservation. Killing something to make sure that it survives…yes, they do deflate that argument very neatly in one or two caustic comments.
There are moments of high humour and others where the comedy is a little thinner, but this is one of those occasions where it’s easy to forgive any slower patches from the knowledge that it’s all in a great cause as much as pure entertainment.
The show is raising money for the Lebombo Leopard - Human Conflict Survey in Mkuze in Northern Zululand, which is studying the collision between man and the environment. Voss is touring the country to promote its work as well as highlight wildlife conservation overall, and there’s a donation box for the project at every show. If you pay per laugh, they’ll raise a lot of money.

Benny Bushwhacker: Human Nature runs at Montecasino’s Studio Theatre until October 20; The Savoy in Port Elizabeth from October 22-26; Hexagon Theatre in Pietermaritzburg from November 4-9; Atterbury in Pretoria on November 13; Somerset West Playhouse November 15-16; and the Baxter in Cape Town from December 10 - January 18. Tickets from Computicket.

Photos: Val Adamson