alan committie the sound of laughterAlan Committie is (still) alive with… The Sound of Laughter at the Theatre on the Bay in Cape Town (Camps Bay to be exact) from 2 December 2014 to 17 January 2015. As a 40-year-old comedian with slightly greying hair, Committie is trying to be a little more serious about his comedy. Which essentially means new material but the same suit.

As for the new material, this is just a taste of what you can look forward to on a night of side-splitting giggles:

  • Selfies to Christmas Elfies
  • Banting whilst bunting
  • The final say on the Pistorius trial
  • A beautifully nuanced recreation of The Sound of Music – in 8 minutes
  • A powerful if ineffective examination of War Horse and why it cannot solve the Middle East Crisis
  • Special appearances by Johan van der Walt and demotivational speaker, Trevor Tahor

This promises to be an evening you don’t want to miss. Unless you do, in which case, you come to another night. Don’t be silly. That’s how theatre works. You knew that. Plus, if you book now, we will throw in an interval somewhere in the middle of the show for free. Except for the drinks. And snacks.”

With all of the above to go on, it’s no wonder that Chantelle leaped at the opportunity to book some tickets via Computicket for the two of us to go and see the always hilarious Alan Committie back in action – though to be fair, she was hoping that I’d rather pick to go and see the also very funny Joe Barber VI currently on at the Baxter theatre.

(Honestly, it wasn’t much of a fair fight in the first place. I simply adore the razor sharp, quick witted Alan Committie!)

Anyway, following a day out at the Drakensberg Lion Park with the kids, we dropped them off for a sleepover with Oupa and Ouma and headed out to Cape Town, with the idea of hitting Hudson’s Burger Joint on Kloof as the starting point for our date night. Surprisingly enough, we navigated the frustrating traffic and streets of Cape Town just fine to find the venue, but weirdly, Hudson’s turned out to be very, very closed.

No idea why, but not that it mattered much – back up plan, hit the Hudson’s in Somerset street in Green Point as an alternative. Again we braved the traffic, found parking, only to be told that Hudson’s was fully packed with a rather long waiting list. Sigh. Slightly dejected now (Chantelle really, REALLY wanted to sample their burgers), we trudged up the street looking for an alternative.

The silly named Cafe Extrablatt caught our attention, and after settling into some comfortable seats with a great street view, we ordered ciders and some particularly good sounding burgers – and boy did Cafe Extrablatt deliver! The burgers were gourmet divine, homemade patties with super fresh ingredients and great presentation, so good in fact that Chantelle couldn’t stop talking about them for the next hour or two!

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With a hard deadline for the show in place, we closed off proceedings with two disgustingly named Sowetan Toilet shooters, before retrieving our car from the undercover parking lot and heading off to Camps Bay via Kloof Nek.

As expected, Camps Bay was packed to the rafters, but due to an absolute miracle, Chantelle managed to find a parking right by Theatre on the Bay, meaning that we were right on time and ready for some fun. The renovated Theatre on the Bay is looking fantastic I have to say (I haven’t been there for a while, so it’s new to me!), and come 20:00 we were seated, waiting and ready!

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As expected, Alan Committie was in fine form, the jokes and social commentary were flying in thick and fast, and of course the audience participation was fantastic (made even more so by the fact that the headmaster of Fish Hoek High School happened to be in attendance. His name? Gavin Fish. Comedy gold I tell you!).

The show was well over two hours in length, with a short interval of course, but with the amount of laughter going on, not to mention the side-splitting, silky smooth finale that had the entire audience crying with laughter, the evening seemed to flash on by.

At the end of the evening, satisfied that our money had been well spent after all, we retrieved our car and hit the N2 to head off home, where I have to say, it was rather nice to be able to wake up late the next morning without Jessica running into the room at 06:30 in order to open the blinds and tell you to get out of bed on account of the sun now shining! :)