Missing in action
Conrad Koch seems like a decent-enough bloke — mild-mannered, unassuming: the type of guy you’d sit down and have a beer with. By contrast Chester Missing, Koch’s comic foil-slash-alter ego, is brash, rude, loud and revels in not minding his Ps and Qs.
And, as a puppet, he gets away with saying far more outrageous things than his ventriloquist master ever could on his own. But all his utterances contain an inherent grain of truth: the “aha!” moment where humour meets fact that forms the kernel of political satire.
Welcome to the comedy world of Missing , in which Koch hauls his notorious puppet — as well as innumerable skeletons and hilarious home truths about SA’s carousel of sociopolitical anomalies — out of a suitcase for a season at the Joburg Theatre’s Fringe venue until November 7.
The comic duo concept — one the “straight” guy, one the funny guy — is a time-tested comedy recipe, popularised by the likes of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, Abbott and Costello, Laurel and Hardy, and Lemmon and Matthau.
In the case of Koch and Missing, it just so happens to be one and the same person who makes up the double act.
Anyone who has ever had nightmares about those old-fashioned ventriloquist’s dummies — you know, the ones with the eerie painted grins and lacquered hair — should not be put off by the fact that the lead protagonist in this show is a doll. Yes, apparently it’s a very real fear: there have been several horror movies made about these puppets, and there’s even a term for it: automatonophobia — a fear of anything falsely representing a sentient being, including ventriloquist dummies.
Chester Missing is certainly not scary — at least, not unless you’re Steve Hofmeyr, who famously tried (and failed) to get a protection order against the puppet following a heated Twitter “twar” between the two. Missing’s “danger” lies in his knack for speaking truth to power and slaying sacred cows (or Cyril Ramaphosa’s buffalo bull, as the case may be) with gleeful impunity. Think of him as a more adult (and less cuddly) Lamb Chop, the famous sock puppet sheep created by American ventriloquist Shari Lewis. Their shrewd brand of takeno-prisoners observational comedy has enabled Koch and Missing to steadily build up a strong national and, increasingly, international profile. They headlined the recent National Arts Festival in Grahamstown and filmed a live show at Parker’s comedy bar for Comedy Central.
They were part of the Late Night News team on e.tv that scooped two International Emmy Award nominations — sadly, the comedy sketch show has been cancelled — and Chester Missing (not Koch, interestingly) was named one of New African Magazine’s most influential Africans last year. So collectively, they have clout.
The opening act for Missing is a cabaret chanteuse called Gigi who does questionable things with a skull on a hat-stand, and is a bit of an offbeat choice. But soon Koch comes on and, after a bit of banter, brings out his star attraction: Missing.
To keep the momentum going for 70-odd minutes is not easy, even in semiscripted stand-up comedy, so Koch has introduced a touch of multimedia as well as two other puppet personas: a vodka-soaked ostrich dandy called Charles Hilary and a green juvenile delinquent monster called Ronnie.
While these devices help to mix things up a bit, the currency of the comedy is critically important in a show of this nature. From his astutely observed quips about the #FeesMustFall movement and other current affairs, it’s clear that Koch is no slouch at keeping his material fresh and topical. He also touches on the Oscar Pistorius case, does Helen Zille and Jan van Riebeeck impersonations, skewers politicians and picks on the audience (why on earth do people choose to sit in the front row at a comedy show?) to mine extra laughs. In this show, Missing’s deadpan irreverence and tell-it-likeit-is attitude repeatedly hits the sweet spot comedy-wise.
He may be Koch’s alter ego, but even when he’s impaled on his manipulator’s hand, this puppet takes on a life, and personality, of his own.
And — shock, horror! — this rabble-rouser is exposed to have originally been a “white” puppet who Koch spray-painted so that, being “black”, he could make stinging commentary about the state of the nation that Koch, as a white comedian, wasn’t able to.
Here, Koch is very deftly sending up the notion of white guilt by suggesting that it’s the substance of the message, not the person delivering it, that should count, be it in political satire or in life. The “race” of his puppet should be irrelevant: it’s what he says that matters. And boy, does he say a lot. And loudly.