Why does the UAE love Trevor Noah? If anyone has the answer, it’s not Noah himself.
“Long before I was doing things in America, like hosting The Daily Show and the Grammys, people were coming to my shows in the UAE. I don’t know why they supported me, but they did. It started with 200-seat shows, and it grew and grew, and look at us now,” Noah said in Abu Dhabi on Saturday.
The South African comedian, 41, is right to marvel at his drawing power. As he spoke, he was looking out at a near-capacity crowd of more than 10,000 people at Etihad Arena to kick off Abu Dhabi Comedy Season – nearly identical to the numbers he drew last year during Abu Dhabi Comedy Week.
Listen to the man speak, of course, and it’s clear why his fandom has remained both loyal and ever-growing. After all, even the best stand-up comedians tend to be quite provincial. Go to a UAE set of many tenured touring comics, and you’ll get jokes about life in New York, London or Lagos – perhaps with a few added local observations they’ve amassed in their drive from the Abu Dhabi airport. While the best ones can pull that off well, few arrive with a truly global mindset.
Noah is different, and always has been. He was, as he puts it himself, "born a crime" – the child of a then-illegal mixed marriage in apartheid-era South Africa. And since then, he’s become perhaps the pre-eminent third culture kid, living across the world and embracing a mixed identity that has made him a perennial outsider.
As a result, Noah has spent his life trying to explain why the world is the way it is – a pursuit that has made him a student of history and a keen observer of current events. That remains his greatest asset, along with his deeply moral perspective, keen eye for observation and sharp wit that allows him to riff on whatever his audience may throw at him.
He’s at his best when all these skills are clicking at once. About an hour into his latest set in Abu Dhabi, he launched into a bit that was among his top material to date – pointing out that the bloody colonial history of some countries is more easily forgotten than others.
“The French were nearly as bad as the English. They went around colonising – maiming, torturing, destroying. The Portuguese basically invented the slave trade. The Spanish demolished entire civilisations for gold, which was worthless at the time,” Noah observed.
“What makes them different? I noticed one thing – these places had really focused on their food. Like my grandmother told me as a child, if you know how to cook, you can make people forget anything.
“Belgium is responsible for one of the worst massacres in African history. Now all we think of is waffles,” he continued.
This is exactly the kind of comedy that his educated audience desires from him, and what sets him so far apart from his peers. But there is another side to Noah. When he’s not political, his clean, observational comedy – which made up the first hour of his latest set of all-new material – resembles Jay Leno and Jerry Seinfeld, albeit less sardonic.
For the first half an hour, he spoke entirely about airports, telling an extended story about the inconsistent rules placed on passengers with many twists and turns. Then, he spoke about babies. The material was fine, but it’s not what makes Noah stand out.
But Noah is seemingly tired of having to be political all the time. That’s likely part of why he left The Daily Show in 2022, and why his pursuits since leaving have been so varied, from launching his own podcast to writing a children’s book. Yes, politics will always be a part of his being, but he’s also Jay Leno, and he's happiest when he can be both.
“It’s the strangest thing. I’ll be out somewhere, living my life, and people will come up to me and say, ‘Trevor, I was wondering why you didn’t say anything about the economy in your last set,” Noah said. “So while I’m still here, is there anything you would like me to talk about?”
Screams from across the audience echoed in near-unison: “Donald Trump!”
“I was hoping we wouldn’t talk about him,” Noah sighed, before launching into 12 minutes of improvised material about the US President.
While there were several hilarious observations throughout, Noah does fall back on some of the rhetorical trappings that are common in liberal-minded communities. He focuses a lot on hypocrisy and masked intentions, for example – bothered more by the fact that people don’t say what they really mean, even if they mean something malicious. He mused that none of what’s happening now should be surprising if you were paying attention earlier. And those are easy observations to make, as they let you off the hook from taking a real stance on the subjects at hand.
Those are the limits of observational humour. It relegates the conversation to reaction rather than prescription. They’re comments from the peanut gallery. Noah would be powerful as a philosophical activist comedian if he so chose, but that’s simply not what interests him. Perhaps as he continues to hone his powers, he will evolve into one. But even if he doesn’t, his audience will remain loyal to him either way.
