Rabinowitz’s Dry White is clean, intelligent social commentary

Dry White is the latest in Nik Rabinowitz’s always-entertaining stand-up comedy routines, brewed up during Cape Town’s water crisis, then extended to cover topics that the rest of the country might care about too.

Eskom gets a mention, although not as much as I’d have expected in the middle of a load shedding crisis. Then he segues into other subjects, like being Jewish, and infidelity. Not that those two are necessarily co-dependent. He’s drawn deeper from personal memories for this show — or perhaps just invented a whole back catalogue of awkward dating stories.

Rabinowitz has a tremendous stage presence, all very low-key with some audience interaction.

His repertoire gives him lots of openings to weave in his impressive talent for accents and languages, and he even mimics dogs barking in different tongues.

He spends quite some time on being “woke” too, and how not to offend a transsexual, gender-fluid population. I suspect he’s being deliberately un-woke when he’s telling these jokes and thereby offending some of the people he’s supposedly championing, but as he implies, anyone over 40 can’t even say “woke” without sounding foolish.

Besides, the Rabinowitz form of offence is a very mild one. He’s never acerbic or confrontational, always making us laugh gently rather than have us roaring with laughter while we inwardly cringe.

That makes Dry White as mellow as it sounds. The laughter comes in patches, building up from a ramble through lots of amusing nonsense in the stories that he tells — like his encounter with a Bo-Kaap resident and how he first discovered he was Jewish.

Often his aim is to provoke some self-reflection as well as laughter, and in Dry White he heads into the touchy subject of land reparations. He does it gently, of course, telling us a funny story about a neighbour who has grabbed some of his own land, then reminding us that white people have benefited for hundreds of years and maybe we can give back.

You have to put yourself in someone else’s shoes, he says, padding it with humour to present us with thoughtful rumination, not preachy moralising.

The evening leaves you laughing and surrounded by a warm glow of contentment. You’ll need it when you venture back home and find the lights are off and the taps dry. DM

Nik Rabinowitz in Dry White runs at Sandton’s Auto & General Theatre on the Square until 23 February. Tickets from Computicket or the theatre on 011 883-8606.