A few comedians have recently been cracking self-conscious jokes inspired by the hashtag "first-world problems". The anxiety, that their material is trivial, is palpable. No such problem for Trevor Noah, whose success – he's a megastar in South Africa, fast-rising in the US and a protege of Eddie Izzard – partly rests on his having a significant story to tell. A mixed-race man who grew up under apartheid, Noah has a unique take on one of the great injustices of the last century – which isn't something anyone has ever said about Jason Manford.
Some of the charge that comes off this touring show is generated by the exoticism (to we pampered Brits) of Noah's problems: being "born a crime" to a Swiss dad and African mum (his pale skin made him "technically a superior citizen to my own mother"), then growing up in a two-room Soweto house with outdoor toilet and newspaper for loo roll. Laid back, happy and possessed of charm by the bucketful, Noah relates all this with more wonder than rancour, as he tries to escape his racial uniqueness and find a "team" to which he can belong.
It's beautifully constructed and performed – so much so, you almost don't notice you're being sold cliches, early on, about British weather and South African crime. But those undertones of glibness recede as Noah's story kicks in. There's a great moment, too, when he's heckled by a Zimbabwean woman asking why Noah doesn't tour there. He could easily resort to ingratiation, but instead launches into a 10-minute section on Mugabe that's courteous and combative in equal measure. His closing routine, about chasing his dream of becoming black by emigrating to the US, concludes with a killer pay-off that reveals tribal pride to be so much fool's gold. Noah, by contrast, is 24-carat.
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