Funny You Should Say That

One night the theatre is full, the next night it’s three-quarters empty. Such is the roller-coaster ride facing even some of the country’s top performers as fickle and increasingly cash-strapped audiences stay away in droves.

So comedian Stuart Taylor walks onto the stage and finds a scattering of people surrounded by gaping, empty seats, where the night before there had been a sea of faces. I felt sorry for him, and made an effort to clap and laugh a little louder to show appreciation. He doesn’t feel sorry for himself though, and launches into his one man comedy as enthusiastically as if the theatre was crammed with international talent scouts.

Taylor is an old hand at one-man comedies, with Learner Husband still embedded in my memory as a particularly hilarious show from several years ago. His latest offering is Funny You Should Say That, built around the ever-topical theme of which words or subjects can and can’t be mentioned in social interactions, and how comedians can always push that a little further.

It’s a hot topic, especially when one racist or misogynist missive on social media can go viral within minutes. Such taboos should be a rich topic for risqué, cutting-edge humour, but Taylor doesn’t really mine this theme enough, and certainly never comes close to offending or inciting us. While it’s the central theme of the show, his patter often drifts off elsewhere, towards his kids and private schools and desperate tic-addicted thieves. The tic-fuelled thief sketches are particularly funny, though, as Taylor inventively pictures their superhuman efforts hoovering up some medals at the Olympics.
Then he’s back to tease or torment us with the threat of the k-word, along with a bit of explanation to foreign members of the audience not grounded in South Africa’s fraught racial tensions. It’s a very locally-focused focused show, but since we're on home turf, that works just fine.

Taylor has a confident, easy and energetic manner that quickly engages us. He’s a skilled magician too, although that’s taken a back seat to the comedy. One imaginary card trick deepens the connection with the audience, and still fits in nicely even though it’s totally off topic.
Afterwards he pops up in the foyer almost immediately to say hello to everyone, and gives us another mini-show as we ask about the difficulties of performing to a meagre house. He still gives it his all, he says, but it changes the dynamics. When you’re playing to a full house it's just a crowd, but this was a more intimate evening when he was addressing us as individuals, so he experiment with some material that he wouldn’t have ventured into with a larger audience, he explained.
Well, it certainly worked out nicely for us. Happy to be of service, sir.

Funny You Should Say That runs at Sandton’s Auto & General Theatre on the Square until November 3. Tickets from Computicket or from the theatre on 011 883-8606.