He MIGHT not have filed for chapter 11 yet, but this comedian is banksrupt.
For a two-week run starting tonight at Sandton’s Auto and General Theatre on The Square, Mark Banks (pictured) presents his one-man revue, Still Banksrupt. It follows his 2013 one-man show titled Banksrupt, which – like Still Banksrupt – was directed by comedian, John Vlismas.
“Bankruptcy doesn’t just relate to money,” says Banks. “As a country, we are morally bankrupt, politically bankrupt, sportily bankrupt.” So Still Banksrupt will tackle those issues and, as Banks explains: “We’ve updated the show with current events like Fifa, xenophobia, Bashir, the AU, the ICC, the CIC and the CICICIC.There’s no interval though,” he says of the 75-minute show as if he’s just remembered. “The interval is in a goodie bag that you can take with you when you leave.”
Still Banksrupt is a mixture of stand-up and sketch. The characters include an estate agent, an old Jewish guy, a car guard and more. Banks, who received the Lifetime Achievement Award at last year’s Comic’s Choice Awards, is passionate about keeping sketch comedy alive. He goes as far as to say he’s attempting to find ways to do more sketch comedy and less stand-up.
“I want to stay in comedy, but get out of stand-up,” he says. “There are just so many stand-up comedians. I think we’ve OD-ed on stand-up. So I want to do sketch and character comedy. I want to be the Nkandla butler. No one’s ever seen inside that house, you know.”
In Still Banksrupt, the estate agent will attempt to sell the Nkandla homestead which Banks describes as “tricky to sell but has underground passages to bedrooms and a cinema and a firepool.” Aside from the quirky characters, “two or three” who are new, a fun feature of the show is when Banks calls a random person found in the phone of an audience member.
Once during a show, he called Patricia de Lille, but she wasn’t home. “We got her maid,” Banks recalls, “and she said (De Lille) is a very bored and strict madam and there’s not much cleaning to be done because she’s always away.” So expect some audience interaction in what Banks describes as a “sleeker, better, faster” production.
Banks’s humour, like his demeanour during interviews, is fiercely sarcastic, but seriously funny. But when he’s not working on stage productions, he’s making television. The I Love SA (on e.tv) mainstay has shot pilots for two TV shows and hopes to be in the shows on your small screen soon.
But for now, the comedian encourages everyone to arrive on time to the show as “we’re also having a cake sale outside the theatre, among the sleeping CEOs, to raise money for Eskom’s R6.8 million bail-out,” he rolls his eyes.
l Still Banksrupt is at Auto and General Theatre on The Square till July 11. Book at www.strictlytickets.com or the box office.