Comedy review: Ursula Botha’s Made you Look, vNAF

Comedy review: Ursula Botha’s Made you Look, vNAF, January 2021

I miss watching stand-up comedy- in a theatre or club. Or rather, I miss experiencing stand-up. Will you be picked on as you hunker down in your seat? Don’t sit too close to the stage. There is the the release of laughter as a group; laughing at our fears as Pieter-Dirk Uys always says; laughing at our insecurities. Through lockdown – almost a year – who is counting – laughter has been essential. There have been countless funnies, spread via WhatsApps and YouTube clips and comedy streamed shows. Right now, January 2021, with the pandemic rates on the boil, many of us have lost our funny. We are trying to be upbeat and positive but it is not easy. This afternoon, I was in need of a comic lift. I did not have the concentration to watch an hour of comedy – and there are many great options available. I needed a quickie- a shot of mirth- like a shot of booze – but we cannot buy alcohol under current lockdown regulations.  I found my funny at the vNAF – Virtual National Arts Festival- with the delightful Made You Look, performed by Ursula Botha. It’s a quirky and wistful look at how 2020 did not pan out as she envisaged. She muses that her vision of 2020 was “way off track”. We can all relate. Botha quips that if you wanted to go with her for lunch, you had to book her three months in advance. Yeah, strange to remember those days.

Botha has written Made you Look. She performs and has edited this fun 2 minute 50 second film. It is fast paced and yes, she makes us look and holds our attention. I loved the editing. Watch. I don’t want to spoil. Tickets are R5 – that’s it. It may be a quickie but a lot of work has gone into the material, filming and editing. Impressive. I see that Botha has an “experimental one-woman show”, Show Up (24mins 30 secs) on the vNAF. That is on my watch list.