Zita rocks Vinyls Comedy Hour

The comedy scene has a new regular in ‘Vinyls Comedy Hour’. Inviting upcoming and established comedians to take the monthly stage in a burst of jokes and jibes, last week’s session featured the talents of Zita, Wilbard, Mr Slick and Jonathan, with Axarob as host.

On a chilly Thursday evening, Vinyls is packed and sold out. Filled with couples on dates, a scattering of girls’ nights and men clutching beers around the bar, ‘Vinyls Comedy Hour’ draws an enthusiastic crowd who sip on Vinyls’ signature purple gin and tonic, wine, beer or gluhwein, as wraps, kapana, charcuterie and nachos make their way to the hungry.

Attendees look cosy, eager to laugh and they dive right in as Axarob announces he’s on his third break from alcohol before expounding on the debauchery that has rendered him “part-time single”.

First to take to the stage after Axarob warms it up is a young comic named Wilbard. Serving a solid set about the differences between black and white parents, why there were no black people on the doomed Titan submersible and how Namibians name dogs, Wilbard keeps it local, lekker and asks some pertinent questions.

“Have you ever seen a white person in a graduation gown? Are we doing the right thing?”

Next to rock the platform is the thoroughly ungovernable Zita, who is ultimately the comedian of the night.

Kicking it off with some notes on the collective psyche, the comic says: “This is how you know people are stressed. You came here for the purpose of laughing. You can’t laugh at your house?”

Waxing comedic about ageing, mjolo and specifically the perils of dating in your 30s, Zita gives us hysterical, relatable, physical comedy that has the crowd hooting at the accuracy. Well-paced, clearly thought out and casually captivating “Auntie Zita’s” notes for those in the dating trenches include cheat back, check Matheus’ ID and “Mjolo doesn’t discriminate. All of us, black, pink, white, we all suffer!”

Following a pretty tough act is Jonathan who campaigns for justice for Dalton and has some hot words for his grandmother, anti-LGBTQI+ protesters at Ongwediva, as well as for his homophobic family on Facebook. Quipping about God’s need to drown pretty much everyone and adding bawdy layers to the idea of Noah’s ark, Jonathan offers an erratic, not entirely focused set that could do without the descent into rape jokes and lazy quips about persons with disabilities.

It’s 2023, we all know better. So-called dark humour doesn’t need to go there and the really good stuff doesn’t.

“It’s a great day to be born again in this room,” jokes Axarob after Jonathan makes way for Mr Slick, the closer for the night.

Leaning into the sexual and with a weird focus on his daughter’s someday sex life, Slick gets the crowd going with jokes about sex and ageing, being a girl dad and his hope that his daughter “becomes a lesbian”.

Hit and miss for me but earning (sometimes uncomfortable) laughs from the crowd, the veteran comic closes the show heavy on famed charm but lacking when it comes to clever, surprising or inventive material.

A Zita win without a doubt, ‘Vinyls Comedy Hour’ is a fun night out.

– martha@namibian.com.na; Martha Mukaiwa on Twitter and Instagram; marthamukaiwa.com