An Audience with Pieter-Dirk Eish! returns to Montecasino from September

Uys’ smash hit show An Audience with Pieter-Dirk Eish! returns by massive public demand to invade the main stage of Pieter Toerien’s Montecasino Theatre in Fourways from Tuesday, 8 September to Sunday, 4 October 2015, celebrating more than three decades of theatrical mirth, mayhem, moegoes and make-up.

But this show has a special twist. Over the years Uys has created more than 80 different characters, from politicians to kugels, icons to aikonas, and will draw from this rogues’ gallery in laying out 15 numbered mystery boxes on stage, each containing a different character from his vast satirical cluster.

The audience will choose which boxes to open, and thereby which characters this veteran entertainer and social commentator will slip into – each providing a telling glimpse of who we are, where we come from and where we are going as a nation. No two shows will ever be alike, making for an anything-goes lucky dip of laugh-out-loud observational humour.

Using humour as his trusty weapon of mass distraction, Uys will morph from a Botha into a Bezuidenhout, or from a Zuma via a Zille into a Merkel. From the beloved Tannie Evita to her debauched sister Bambi, from Nowell Fine to Mama Winnie and Grace Mugabe, from the Arch to Mother Theresa – they’re all there, waiting to be unpacked, unpicked and paraded on the red carpet.

The news of the day will be cannily reflected in this cracked mirror of a rainbow nation smiling at the familiar, shocked by the obvious and, above all, laughing at itself.

Uys will be turning 70 on 28 September 2015 – in the middle of the Johannesburg return season of An Audience with Pieter-Dirk Eish! Yet, with some 35 one-man shows and in the region of 7000 stage appearances under his belt, not to mention several plays, books, films and local and international awards, he has no desire to slow down.

He says: “If 70 feels this good, I’m looking forward to the next 10-plus years on the stages and screens of South Africa.”

Performances of An Audience with Pieter-Dirk Eish! are on Tuesdays to Fridays at 20:00, with shows at 17:00 and 20:00 on Saturdays, and on Sundays at 15:00.

Tickets range between R100 and R170 in price, for an opportunity to see this national treasure in action and to laugh at – and away – your troubles. The show is rated PG (parental guidance advised). Book through Computicket or phone the Montecasino Theatre on +27 11 511-1988.