Hobnobbing with the great and good is not a recipe for great satire. Pieter-Dirk Uys has done more than most to earn his invitation to tea with Nelson Mandela - he poked fun at the South African state throughout the apartheid era, and is now a prominent Aids activist. But national treasure status is bound to blunt the bite of an anti-establishment attack dog, and tonight Uys isn't so much unleashed as house-trained. The new South Africa is spoofed and his Mandela encounter reverentially recounted, as Uys tickles the tummies of a mainly ex-pat crowd.
This new show campaigns for his Dame Edna-style alter ego, Evita Bezuidenhout, to assume the presidency of first the ANC and then, in 2009, the country. Uys takes us on a tour of the rainbow nation by adopting several personas, including the mixed-race housewife who has gone from being "not white enough" to "not black enough". The political references, and Afrikaans asides, are parochial. Imagine Rory Bremner gigging in Cape Town: local audiences would be forgiven for feeling a little nonplussed.
However, the show remains a likable primer in South African politics, studded with mild jokes about corruption (ANC stands for "a nice cheque") and Mbeki. What little ire Uys can summon is directed at health minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, who prescribes treating HIV with beetroot and who recently underwent a liver transplant. "We're still hoping," says Uys, "that the liver finds out it can reject the body." But judging by this, neither Evita's candidacy nor Uys's raillery will have the presidential forerunners quaking in their boots.
· Until September 1. Box office: 020-7328 1000.
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