Comedy Festival 2018: Loyiso Gola’s fuse never lights in Unlearning

UNEXPECTEDLY low energy effort from usually charming South African comic.

LOYISO Gola told us last year in his excellent 4.5-star Dude Where’s My Lion? set “comedy is not an honest sport”. So when he tells us in his Unlearning show that he’s been lying in his bed upstairs, watching movies on Netflix and proudly not seeing any of Melbourne and Victoria’s sights, he may well be telling a furphy.

Thing is, Gola rubs his eyes and talks and acts like a man who has forgotten the maxim “You need to use energy to create energy”. It’s as if he rolled outta bed and sidled on to stage.

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He tries an early joke about YouTube’s recent HQ shooting without employing enough moves (or any acknowledgement that it was a tragedy) and ends up telling us that the gear is good enough and we should be laughing. It’s like he handed us a Rubik’s cube with one side completed, but refused to admit all the other colours are way out of sync, rather like this clunky, not-quite-there criticism. I’ll try again: Gola could have won us over early if he’d hunkered down and offered us an un-impeachable joke.

Loyiso Gola doesn’t quite connect with the crowd in Unlearning.

He half-banters with the crowd, not quite engaging them, even acknowledging, mid-chat: “We’re just two South African people talking now” when he should have brought the room closer together (like Denise Scott does so well) and led us to another anecdote.

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The lanky comic doesn’t connect with Trump material, the fuse never lights on his nuclear bomb, before imitating an Indian voice and giving us accent justification that causes the first big laugh: “Your white guilt does not transfer.”

The 34-year-old discusses class and race issues, Mythbusters and why he doesn’t mind people saying bad things about his mother. It all goes over well without landing enough knockout blows to the LOL-ar plexus.

I could feel myself fading hard in the second half of the set, like I was about to faint. He got bogged down in tired hipster material and only hit his straps with Nelson Mandela and Marlon Brando impersonations.

2.5 stars feels harsh but, above all, honest.

Loyiso Gola, Unlearning

Mantra on Russell, Until April 22

comedyfestival.com.au

Loyiso Gola get bogged down in Unlearning.