Best of the Heat City Comedy Festival

Durban’s Heat City Comedy festival launches next week and will run throughout the city from the 30th of July to the 4th of August. The festival features a range of both line-up shows and one-man performances from many of the country’s freshest, and most exciting comedy acts.

With his blog Durban is Yours, organiser Bob Perfect developed a reputation for having his finger on the pulse of live entertainment, often predicting success for music and comedy acts years before they actually became famous. It’s a reputation that he has only bolstered over the years as a promoter and radio host, and the Heat City Comedy Festival is very much in line with that ethos.

With this in mind, those who love to laugh, should pretty much grab as many tickets they can get their hands on at the festival, as the shows are guaranteed to be packed with both the stars of the future, and the acts from around the country who are blowing things up with their originality.

That all said, here are six shows (all at the Seabrooke’s theatre at Durban High School) we are particularly excited about. Get your tickets for guaranteed laughs:

“Love and other jokes” Simmi Areff – 8.30pm, Friday 2 August

Simmi Areff’s casual chatty style is in perfect alignment with this slightly sarcastic, generally warm show about romance, love and dating. Areff delivers charmingly funny jokes as well as “poems” while his friend Jaedon Daniel will be on the piano playing songs about love.

“Up and Up” Bongani Dube – 10.30am, Saturday 3 August

Bongani Dube is a wild breath of fresh air. A multiple Comic’s Choice Award nominee, Dube’s infectious silliness and whacky persona add up to a solid hour of excellent laughs. You will find yourself relooking a lot of stuff you took for granted in this highly original comedian’s material, and will likely leave wondering how a brain like that gets through an average day unscathed.

“D(e)ad Inside” Warren Robertson – 3pm

A brutally honest retelling of the year Warren Robertson became a father, got a divorce and watched his own dad die, this is so much funnier than it has any right to be. Robertson’s show can go from rage to wordplay in a heartbeat and the effect is completely captivating. Despite the topic, you can expect to leave with sore sides,  uplifted and affirmed.

“Good Kid MAAD witty” Dillan Oliphant – 6.30pm, Saturday 3 August

First Dillan Oliphant climbed to the pinnacle of SA one-liner comedians, and now he is branching out into more story-based tales. The clever, and pinpoint perfect one-liners are still in there though, layered in stories about his childhood and neighbourhood. It’s excellently crafted comedy that will ring every laugh out of a topic and leave you weeping with laughter.

“Frizzpop”, Lindy Johnson and Kate Pinchuck – Midday, Sunday 4 August

Lindy Johnson and Kate Pinchuck must be two of the funniest new comedians in the country and they combine here for a show that is an hilarious deconstruction of life for 20-something women in SA. They deftly manage to avoid cliches while mining awkwardness and insecurity for gut-bursting laughs in a way that won this show an Ovation award at the recent Grahamstown Arts Festival.

“Canabliss” Alyn Adams – 6pm, Sunday 4 August

Famous throughout Durban for his Headspace column that ran for years in the Sunday Tribune, Alyn Adams has developed a reputation for his dry wit and wicked intelligence, all of which is laced with a kind of theatrical silliness. Expect him to burst into song from time-to-time as he looks at the highly relevant topic of Cannabis; it’s history, its uses, the culture around it and how it has related to his life.

Tickets for all shows are available on Webtickets. For more information on the festival head to their Facebook page.

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