Political satire is a tricky thing; it's only as strong as its target. It was easier to wring a joke out of Margaret Thatcher than John Major, and nobody hates Tony Blair enough to be really cutting about him.
Consider then the situation of Pieter-Dirk Uys, the South African comedian who, in apartheid South Africa, was a constant and very funny scourge of the government, with such creations as Mrs Evita Bezuidenhout, "the most famous white woman in South Africa".
Then Nelson Mandela came to power. Uys could have faded away, but instead he has come back, teeth bared, with a series of shows - Dekaffirnated, Truth Omissions and Live From Boerossic Park - that lay bare the contradictions and struggles at the heart of the new South Africa.
His latest show demonstrates that comedy really can be about matters of life and death. It is about Aids, and the way the HIV virus is devastating his country.
Within two years, it is predicted, there will be 2m Aids orphans in South Africa. Forty per cent of the workforce is believed to be HIV positive and 30% of 15-year-olds are infected. As Uys comments, while Britain buries its lambs, South Africa is burying its babies.
These statistics are not funny, but Uys gets us laughing - not at death, but at fear, ignorance, complacency and drug companies, as well as the curious head-in-the-sand mentality of President Thabo Mbeki, who won't accept the link between HIV and Aids.
Uys's comedy is ruthless, making links with the Holocaust. Perhaps, he suggests, the political leaders during the second world war did nothing about the mass murder of the Jews because because they actually thought "a few million less Yids" would be a good thing.
Perhaps the thinking on South Africa is that 20m fewer blacks wouldn't matter either. Hey - if things carry on like this, there might eventuallybe a white majority in the country.
Uys's show has as much to do with campaigning as comedy. But I have never had a more enjoyable time being soap-boxed. Laughter alone may not change the world. But Uys knows how to use it as a weapon to start the revolution.
Until August 10. Box office: 020-7328 1000.
