What a gift to Trevor Noah that his one-off UK date coincided with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s wedding. The Daily Show host dedicates a full 10 minutes to the event at the start of his set, and it’s high quality material given its presumably hasty composition. But then the nuptials of a mixed-race American and a member of the British royal family is meat and drink to Noah, a comic who majors in race and social mores across borders and who, as a South African, is no slouch on the imperial self-regard of Britain’s ruling class.
His wedding material certainly delights the locals – even those of us who’ve spent the day in a republican huff. He delivers a great line about the event’s supposed diversity (“Let me tell you something: a black cellist cancels itself out”), before imagining how it would have unfolded had it really been “a black wedding”. Yes, these jokes trade in broad stereotypes, and midway through Noah’s show I began to weary of his “white people do this, black people do that” shtick. But, for now, his cheerful ribbing of the claims being made for this establishment beanfeast were a pleasure to submit to.
It all serves as a fine launchpad for the section in which Noah teases Brits for saying “sorry” all the time (see what I mean about stereotypes?), then imagines whether we did so while colonising Africa. From there, he weighs different perspectives on the “battles” waged between Brits and Zulus, and roleplays the anxious moment when a freed slave is offered passage to his new life – but on a boat. The subject matter is gratifyingly substantial but scarcely seems so, such is the easy swing of Noah’s smiling comedy.
Sometimes, it’s too smiling – or, at least, too slick. I found the middle section harder to love. There’s an extended routine about hitting children (ground well trodden by black standups), as Noah recalls beatings at his mother’s hands and the African practice (as he describes it) of blithely whacking other people’s kids, too. It has its moments, but I found Noah’s evident amusement at the practice a little offputting. Then there’s a long story about an “authentic Balinese experience” Noah had on a recent holiday. Not for the last time tonight, his story – about exploitative tourism and a snake-charming act gone wrong – is brilliantly told and completely unconvincing.
Of course every word may be true, but there’s something about Noah’s smooth style and the neatness of the incidents he describes that ring a little inauthentic. The political material – there’s less than you might expect – can also feel trite. There’s a routine that’s starry-eyed about Barack Obama. Another, on gun control, takes potshots at an easy target – Trump’s proposal that teachers be armed. The jokes about the president’s border wall are better, particularly the emperor’s-new-clothes payoff, featuring a droll cameo from a troupe of Mexican mime artists.
He ends strongly, with a section declaring sympathy for old racists and positing a novel relief strategy for them; and another addressing the N-word and what it connotes to speakers of the Xhosa language. At his best – which is where he spends about half of tonight’s show – Noah’s laid-back optimism can take heavyweight subjects seriously, and still render them momentarily lighter than air.