Is there a silver lining to the Covid-19 pandemic? Seeing the world’s most obnoxious nations forced to face their incompetence is a contender, suggests Trevor Noah. Boris Johnson and Donald Trump catching the virus after publicly playing it down, for example. Noah’s lively re-enactment raises cheers.
Back to Abnormal is a global show for a shared global experience. Noah uses his talent for accents to take us on a world tour, swapping his own South African inflection for English, American, Australian, French, German, Jamaican and more, as he fills the stage with characters. His refrain “I want to get back to the way things were” punctuates the show. But as he tackles different flavours of racism and nationalism, it invites the question: were things really that great before?
Some jokes are a little obvious. A segment on his hatred of Zoom recalls conversations we’ve all had during lockdown, while observations about the Olympics, food and dancing feel familiar. As fans of his Daily Show monologues might expect, Noah is strongest when he’s exploring weightier subjects. He probes the absurdity of some of the things done in the name of freedom: the French niqab ban, American gun ownership, and protesting against masks.
There’s an impressive amount of material tailored to his UK audience – mention of Indian restaurant Dishoom gets a big cheer, and the England football fan who put a flare in his bum crack during the Euros inspires a great joke about race. Meanwhile, the treatment of Meghan Markle, racist football fans and our colonial hoarding of other nations’ treasures get a well-executed roasting.
A flawless performer, Noah skilfully speckles the set with sillier stuff too, including a nice bit about aliens deciding which areas of Earth to destroy, and acting out a T-rex attempting to don a mask. He incorporates audience interjections seamlessly. And he wraps up with a story set in an Indian restaurant which plays with political correctness and offers a neat ending. He sometimes relies on cliche, but Noah is a master of classic standup and has mass appeal in the best possible way. Back to Abnormal squeezes much-needed laughs from a difficult 18 months.
