Making theater of the politics of the absurd

Pieter-Dirk Uys stands in front of a poster of himself dressed as Evita Bezuidenhout. (Kati Mitchell)

CAMBRIDGE - When it comes to democracy, the South African satirist Pieter-Dirk Uys is quick to point out, his native country is still only 14 years old.

"We're just a teenager!" exclaims Uys from the stage of the Zero Arrow Club. "Our voice hasn't broken yet."

Uys himself is 63, so he grew up in a very different South Africa, suffocated - but not silenced - by apartheid. A white man who grew up speaking both English and Afrikaans, he has been crafting sharp-tongued shows about politics and sex (in both languages) for decades. Now, in his country's new adolescence, he's still doing it. But adolescence can be a tricky time - for satirists as well as for the rest of us.

Uys's current show, "Elections and Erections: A Chronicle of Fear and Fun," contains some brilliantly funny moments, some sharp observations of both South African and US politics, and, of course, appearances by some of the performer's most familiar alter egos - notably the outrageously oblivious Evita Bezuidenhout, "the most famous white woman in South Africa," and an equally exaggerated drag version of Archbishop Desmond Tutu. But now that the universally condemned evil of apartheid has given way to the messier and more complex flaws and virtues of an evolving democracy, it's clearly harder for Uys to find a single stunning focus for his barbs.

Sometimes that doesn't much matter. Evita is still a hoot, in her out-Daming Dame Edna sort of way; Uys's portrayal of Mother Teresa, answering phones in heaven, is silly and amusing, and his Hillary Clinton isn't half bad, either. But, as that list might indicate, the show itself doesn't naturally cohere into an organic whole.

Partly that's because much of Uys's best stuff is distinctly South African, and here he's apparently trying to tailor it for an American audience. The effort is understandable, but it doesn't always work. Some of the South African political references are unfamiliar here, and the need to explain them slows down the pace of the storytelling. On the other end of the spectrum, Uys's jokes about US politics sometimes have the slightly stale, almost-on-target quality you'd expect from material that's had to travel back and forth across the Atlantic a couple of times.

Uys's skills as a performer and mimic are remarkable. His sense of timing, his ability to transform himself with the wave of a hand and a fake eyelash or two, and his virtuosic range of accents and tones are always fascinating to watch. His political points, too, are hard to argue with; he's particularly passionate on the subject of AIDS and the appalling response of Thabo Mbeki's government to this crisis, and his ability to pinpoint absurdity makes his critique here especially strong.

Sometimes the best satire is a simple statement of the facts: that South Africa's health minister recommends eating beets to boost immunity instead of taking anti-retroviral drugs, for example, or that presidential candidate Jacob Zuma has said he had unprotected sex with someone who's HIV-positive, but he's not worried because he took a shower afterward. Such idiocy requires little elaboration beyond Uys's expressively raised brow.

When he's not touring, Uys runs a cabaret in a converted train station in the implausibly named South African town of Darling - "Evita se Perron," it's called, in a pun on the Afrikaans word for train station, and it sounds like a treat. The American Repertory Theatre has sensibly provided a similar setting for this show in its Zero Arrow Theatre, once again configured as a nightclub (complete with cash bar) and dubbed the Zero Arrow Club.

Word is that the show is as flexible as the setting, and that Uys, like any sharp comedian, has been polishing and revising it every night to suit the audience. That's a good sign - and it may mean that "Elections and Erections," like the young nation that inspired it, is finding a way to grow up.