A royal time with Evita and company

Expect laughs aplenty as “Tannie Evita” is one of South Africa’s first ladies of politics and potjiekos — so who better to make a satirical meal of the state of the nation this Women’s Month?

And, this time, she will have sundry members of her (dysfunctional) family and other political animals to keep her company on stage.

The irrepressible Evita has been in Uys’s satirical cluster for more than 30 years and he is forced to keep on dieting just for her sake.

But, while the two are often mentioned in the same breath, they could never be in the same room together, let alone meet each other face to face.

And yet, once in a blue moon, the impossible becomes possible: this August, Pieter-Dirk Uys and Evita Bezuidenhout will be together on one stage in Evita and Company.

In addition to Evita, Uys will be bringing a menagerie of much-loved characters with him to Ekurhuleni: “a saamtrek of Bothas”, Evita’s estranged stripper sister and, of course, the parade of politicians who have been Uys’s reliable scriptwriters since the 1980s – including the latest bunch of bench-warmers, who never fail to let him down.

“And now that the EFF has introduced stand-up comedy to Parliament, in matching red berets to match the red faces around them, laughter is foremost in the land,” Uys points out.

Expect to see the evergreen Nowell Fine from Saxonwold, the opinionated Mrs Petersen from the Cape Flats, the outrageous sex guru Madame Bambi Kellermann, as well as the political Number Ones,

There will be a surprise in each show, as Tannie Evita has invited some very special friends to join her on stage in commemoration of Women’s Day.

Catch one of the three performances of Evita an Company at the Theatre of Marcellus, Emperors Palace.

There are two performances on Saturday, August 9, at 5pm and 8pm, and one on Sunday, August 10, at 3pm.