Man oh man, I THOROUGHLY enjoyed the KFM Real Heavyweight Comedy Jam held at Grandwest Casino last Thursday, where Claire, Riley, Chantelle and I met up for an evening of laughs and a quick supper at Squires before the main event kicked off.
KFM has been promoting comedy events for a while now, and The Real Heavyweight Comedy Jam is the latest product of their efforts, a big local boy event starring the well know South African comedians Nik Rabinowitz, Stuart Taylor, Martin Jonas, Chris Forrest and David Kau. MC for this particular show was the ever popular radio prankster and comedian, Darren “Whackhead” Simpson and before him we got to see KFM’s morning disc jockey, Ryan O’Connor in action, who surprisingly enough, made a pretty good account of himself.
The Grandwest Arena wasn’t the fullest I’ve ever seen it, but there were just in excess of 4000 people packed in, so it certainly wasn’t a badly attended event. We managed to snag quite nice seats on the retractable stands and thanks to a very good quality big screen and some nice lighting overhead, had an awesome view of both the live and close-up action.
Now old Whackhead Simpson I am not a fan of. Well at least on radio that is because I quite frankly find his voice to be nauseatingly annoying, but amazingly enough, seeing him live is a completely different story. The man was funny, entertaining, a little bit naughty like you’d expect him to be and in the end made for a marvellous MC who added a hell of a lot of laughs to an already side-splittingly funny show.
Of course the theme for the night was in general boxing, hence the Heavyweight tag, and so each act was prefixed with a beautiful ring-girl prancing out on stage holding up the round number, and this invariable led to a lot of shoelace-watching by all the husbands (and fiancées) in the audience lest their partners beat them over the head with a handbag. Needless to say this finer point in man-women relations was duly noted by the MC.
Round 1 for the evening turned out to be the lightest of the heavyweights, with the literally heavyweight Chris Forrest stepping up to the plate and delivering his signature deadpan comedy act. Initially it really is funny, but the deadpan wears thin pretty quickly, which would have been a problem if he didn’t have quite as many sharp and funny puns to counteract this with. I must admit that I did thoroughly enjoy his set, but in the end, must class him as the lightest weight for the evening’s entertainment (I’m obviously not including O’Connor because he isn’t a recognised comedian and wasn’t really part of the show).
Round 2 I believe was local Capetonian funny man Stuart Taylor who had us all laughing with his very funny, but true, reflections on married life and the nuances of man-wife relationships. However, despite his best attempts, he really couldn’t compete with Round’s 3 act because to be quite honest, the Jewish Xhosa-speaking and 2008 Stand Up Comedian of the Year, Nik Rabinowitz simply blew everyone straight out of the water. Here is a man that is simply put, an absolute comedy genius. With an arsenal of absolutely unbelievable impersonations he had the audience rolling around on the floor in tears with his tales of Gladys and Agnes reffing a rugby match amongst others – seriously the highlight of the evening if you ask me! :)
Round 4 served up a man named Martin Jonas, a comedian who I’ve never heard of and who despite his slow start, soon had me roaring out in laughter with his absolutely fantastic impersonations and humorous observations. (Just a note to Martin though, the standing ovation audience participation start-off really doesn’t work all that well when we’re still a bit cold towards you – try it at the end of the act would be my suggestion!)
Then finally, last but not least, the seeming headline act stepped into the ring and David Kau delivered his sought after goods, evoking a LOT of laughter from a very appreciative crowd. Funnily enough thought, despite laughing at his jokes, I did find myself not fully appreciating his set. In a fashion very similar to Pieter Dirk Uys and his Evita persona, a lot of David’s humour relies on him putting a humorous spin on some very real issues, issues who themselves if you stepped back for a minute and examined them without a comedy setting, are in fact quite dark and not funny at all pieces of reality of this world, and more particularly the country, that we ourselves live in.
And then there was the line he crossed which I really didn’t think funny at all. This was knee deep in the area of tastelessness, a place that most comedians skirt around and tickle a bit but never truly try to actually end up in unless absolutely necessary. Now we all know Morgan Tsvangirai recently lost his wife in an accident where a truck rode straight into them. Hit attempt? Maybe, no one thinks that but it is of course a possibility. So why then in God’s name must you make a joke about someone trying to kill Bob by ramming him with a car? Not cool David, not cool.
In any event, I absolutely loved the show and haven’t laughed this hard in absolute ages! Shame, I think the people around me must have thought me quite the madman the way I was carrying on – always funny because a lot of the time I tend to start laughing way before the comedian actually gets to his punchline – sometimes it’s just that obvious to me! :D
Also, the show was particularly worth it’s ticket price. Despite the fact that they had a bit of a late start, only kicking off well after 20:30 when the supposed start time was 20:00, the show did carry on until well after 23:00 (including a short half-time break) with almost all the comedians going over their alloted set time! Brilliant stuff I tell you!
So anyway, next time this show rolls back into town, I’ll definitely be there, front line of the queue and everything! :)