I had a
chance to see Trevor Noah live for a second time last week, and I had an
amazing time. A mix of bits I’d seen
before and things I hadn’t, but it was still awesome to see live – I laughed so hard, pretty much from start to
finish. And since Last Week Tonight wrapped up their season for the year and The Daily Show was off this week for
Thanksgiving, it was pretty much the perfect time to have a live show to
review.
Like I
said, quite a bit I’d heard before, both from The Daily Show and from different standup clips I’ve seen. Mostly, though, it was just short
bits/observations here and there, like the difficulty of driving on the left
side of the car or how Trump wants to be
president but not “do”
president. In each case, they were in
the middle of longer material that I wasn’t familiar with.
There
were two longer stories I’d seen before, one about the N-word and another about
Trevor’s first time eating tacos. In the
latter case, I’d previously seen a clip of him doing maybe 4-5 minutes on the whole anecdote, but here, with Trevor’s
tangential style of delivery, I bet it took at least 20. It really highlighted to me that, as a
stand-up, it’s hard to get a sense of what he’s really like in a clip or short
snippet. On The Daily Show, of course, the stories fit into nice 5-to-10-minute
segments, but onstage, Trevor really knows how to take his times getting
somewhere, going on numerous detours and coming back to his main point just often enough that you remember what
story he’s telling. Granted, I haven’t
seen a ton of full stand-up shows, but that style strikes me as fairly unique.
As for
stuff that was new to me, there was plenty to love. He had a fun story about when he got to
interview Obama for The Daily Show
and an absolutely hysterical bit about trap music – I was dying. He also had a really
great routine about immigration and xenophobia; I loved his proposal that
anyone who hates immigrants shouldn’t be allowed to eat immigrant food, and he
had some terrific insights on white people who are afraid of “becoming the
minority” in America.
Overall,
a really fantastic show. As usual, a lot
of great observations about race, culture, and politics, some good silly stuff,
and just an all-around great time. I’m
continually impressed by Trevor’s sharpness and talent.
Warnings
Language
(including the N-word,) a few drug references, and thematic elements.
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