Review: Van Vuuren Makes LIFE a Laugh-a-minute Affair at the Baxter Theatre's Golden Arrow Studio

LIFE is complicated. Rob van Vuuren's new show is a side-splitting observation of the way we live today. Along with everyone else in the audience, I laughed at his rants on emojis, hipsters and his family's menagerie of pets. Van Vuuren is uproariously funny, landing the many laughs that he sets up with his particularly distinctive flair. I had a grin on my face throughout the show and I wish that I could simply say, to coin a phrase, that LIFE is just a bowl of cherries.

Over the years, Van Vuuren has developed a comic persona as a personable South African everyman, a regular oke who is as happy talking kak with audiences as he is sharing candid stories from his personal life or taking pot-shots at the likes of Penny Sparrow and Matthew Theunissen. LIFE offers a bit of everything that has makes local audiences love Van Vuuren. He kicks off with a frank dressing down of motivational speakers, a rant that lends structure and a series of motifs to the show, then proceeds with stories and quips about a diverse range of topics, all derived from a central comparison between this great mystery in which we all find ourselves and the toilet at home affairs.

Directed by Tara Notcutt, LIFE is built around the traditional aesthetic of the stand-up comic at a microphone. Its theatricality is rooted in a stripped down aesthetic that honours the roots of the style even as the show aspires towards greater cohesion than a standard comedy routine if not quite achieving the golden standard that a show like Martin Evans's FBPK embodies in this regard.

Ironically, it is in that very negotiation between the formats of club act and comic monologue that makes the experience of watching LIFE not all beer and skittles. There were times during LIFE when I felt as uneasy as I felt amused. This has less to do with the text of the show or Van Vuuren's performance thereof than with the context of its presentation in the perhaps overly intimate setting in the Baxter Theatre's Golden Arrow Studio. The chamber-sized space makes for easy interaction between Van Vuuren and his audiences when called for, but it also increases tenfold the ubiquitous danger at comedy shows of being singled out from the crowd, which was the fate of a few of the audience members in the first two rows during the show. This kind of heckling from the stage is almost part-and-parcel of watching stand-up, but the kind of interaction that audience members can easily shoulder in venues like the Baxter's Concert Hall or Theatre can be terrifying in a theatre space of only eight rows. There is no escape, no room to breathe, at that proximity. While it is certainly beyond a performer's mandate to deal with the mindset of every individual in his audience, the intersection of style, setting and audience interaction needs more than a one-size-fits-all approach when even one of those elements shifts from the norm. In LIFE, at least two of the three are in play at any given moment.

That said, Van Vuuren is a fine comedian with a good sense of where his audience is at during the show and LIFE, whether reflecting on the tribulations of getting a five-year-old ready for school or the wonders of podcasts, is a laugh-a-minute affair. Just watch out if you're seated in those first three rows...

LIFE runs at the Baxter Golden Arrow Studio until 28 May on Mondays through Saturdays at 20:15. Tickets cost R100, with special discounts available for senior citizens, students and group bookings. Bookings can be made online through Computicket, by phone on 0861 915 8000 or at any Shoprite Checkers outlet. The show carries an age guideline of PG16.

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