My favourite Chappelle show sketch was Clayton Bigsby, the blind white supremacist who managed to hate black people while secretly being one. It was this incredibly relevant indictment of racism—the irrationality of white supremacist ideology skewered in five minutes by a comedy sketch.
It is my long-held belief that comedians are our society’s modern-day philosophers. They use humour to spotlight our hypocrisy, revealing uncomfortable truths while generously offering us plausible deniability.
I love seeing a comedian at the top of their game. I’ve seen Jim Jefferies - twice - both times performing to a highly enthusiastic audience. I’ve watched Chris Rock, Dylan Moran and Hannah Gadsby. I was not keen to see the latter, feeling like her particular brand of humour wouldn’t be to my taste, but she was brilliant. She had this entire routine that seemed to have no connection until right at the end when it all comes together, and you’re sitting in your seat, slack-jawed, trying to puzzle her genius together.
That’s really what all these great comedians have in common. They’re interesting. They walk onto the stage and start telling stories. And an hour later, you’re transformed.
Dave Chappelle is the greatest of them all. His facial expressions, body movements, just watching him walk across a stage in that particular manner of his - he is a comedic genius.
So when Chappelle came to Brisbane, I wasted no time getting tickets.
It is, however, another of my long-held beliefs that when a performer is booked to perform at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre, the organisers are fully aware of what a massive inconvenience that venue is.
On Wednesday night, we decided to take a maxi-taxi. We calculated that public transport would save us the hassle of finding parking and help avoid the gridlock created when 5000 cars all try to leave a car park at once.
Even so, getting there felt tense. There were 10 km worth of cars lining up for the turn-off. Brisbanites, never having come to terms with traffic congestion, were eyeballing one another as vehicles tried to merge across. I saw a few angry hand gestures and felt a general mood of annoyance envelop the crowd as they made their way inside.
After the hassle of getting there, it was tough giving the first opening act the attention he deserved. The crowd was restless, and he gave it his best shot, but his material didn’t translate to an Australian audience. At one point, he attempted a few jokes down the #blacklivesmatter seam, but they mostly didn't resonate with his Brisbane audience. In truth, he seemed somewhat unprepared, and only a few of his jokes hit the mark.
I used to think that when a comedian gave a local artist the opening act, it was an act of benevolence. Now I think it's good business. When I saw Jim Jefferies in 2022, he had Australian Amos Gill open for him. Gill did a great job warming the crowd up and understanding his Australian audience's sense of humour.
The second comedian, Donelle Rawlings, was more comfortable with the crowd. He poked fun at us and translated an American song's lyrics so that his Ozzie audience would get it. Though my laughter felt somewhat uneasy, as mere moments before, he had described shooting a dog whilst simultaneously buggering it. It was an uncomfortable style of comedy that has never really sat well with me.
The LA Times recently wrote an article about Dave Chappelle; they raise the point that he’ll never bomb simply due to his phenomenal star power. You felt the crowd's energy go up when he walked onto the stage. Of course, the DJ pumping out a medley of all the 90s hip-hop hits didn't hurt. It was like watching a prizefighter come into the ring. Moments before, I had all been dancing to DMX’s, Lose my cool, and then Chappelle appeared.
It’s hard to put words down describing an act like Chappelle’s. I got a sense that very little of his show was scripted. He spent more time talking with his audience than any other comedian I had ever seen. There were your usual attention-seeking hecklers. One person showed off an impressive whistle, but really these people just embarrassed themselves. He seemed most interested in a family of six who had brought their ten-year-old child to the show. This in itself presented him with 20 minutes of pure comedy gold. For a while, it felt as though the crowd's rowdiness might cause Chappelle to lose his focus, but he just moved the show along ever the professional. The highlight of his performance was, without a doubt, his use of body language, invoking a fictitious disabled person who supposedly wanted to storm out of the show, only to find himself drawn back in again and again. This is the genius of Chappelle, his ability to see us for who we are instead of who we want you to think we are.
Overall though, he played it relatively safe. He steered well clear of topics that have recently caused the cancellation of shows and seemed to have little taste for heavier subject matters. Regular people have been through the wringer in recent years: pandemics, natural disasters, wars, and inflation. I was relieved that he kept his show light.
Even though this felt like a tamer Chappelle than some of his previous work, I will still remember this as the night I saw the greatest comedian alive.