After so many years of seeing Trevor Noah behind a desk on The Daily Show, which he hosted from 2015-2022, it was great fun to see the full body version of Noah’s pleasing mashup of comedic commentary, incisive observation, and captivating storytelling on stage at the Santa Barbara Bowl last weekend.
Born in South Africa to a Swiss-German father and Xhosa mother, Noah’s comedy is known for bringing a multicultural, global perspective on American politics and culture, and those characteristics were definitely on display in his affably entertaining set on Saturday night, the first of two shows at the Bowl.
Noah had a nice mix of semi-site-specific topics like driving from L.A. to Santa Barbara (“all these random turns … it’s just me and a thousand other Waze fiends trying to shave a minute off our time”) and not liking the beach (“you rinse the sand off your feet in the water and then you walk back on the beach in the sand”). Those were mixed in with the differences between male and female ideas of romance (“What happens is when a woman likes you, she takes your creepiness and she converts it into romance. It’s like the photosynthesis of creepy.”) and how different men and women are in a myriad of ways.
Maleness and the differences between men and women and how they process emotions were a running theme. It’s why men love sports so much, according to Noah. “It’s the one place where we feel things without being judged by ourselves. …. We get to cry. We get to be sad. We get to be disappointed, and we get to blame it on the team. We bring everything we’ve experienced that week and we put it on the team. All those New York Knicks fans — they weren’t burning the streets because of the Knicks. That was everything they’ve experienced in their life for the last 50 years. Finally, they had an excuse to express it.”
Some of his funniest moments were his impressions — Barack Obama, George Bush, and especially Donald Trump— all of which were spot-on and hilarious.
His bit about what it would be like if Trump trained our AI was so funny I had tears (both the laughing and the crying kind) streaming down my cheeks as he went on, with his Trump accent sprinkled in: “Who better to test a system that constantly spews BS than an AI? You think you think they give you problems now. At least now your AI will apologize to you. … You give it one week with Trump training, and you’ll be like, ‘What is the capital of Nicaragua?’ It’ll be like, ‘Paris.’ You’re like, ‘That’s wrong.’ And the AI will be like, ‘No, it’s not. A lot of people are saying it. A LOT of people are saying it. A lot of people are saying that Paris is in Nicaragua.’”
He also riffed on how Trump is not kidnappable. In his Trump accent: “I’ve been kidnapped. So kidnapped. Taken away, and now and now they’re gonna have to pay a ransom. Some are saving the biggest ransom of all time. Never had a bigger ransom. So much money, the world may not have enough money to pay it. Even Elon, Elon said, ‘I can’t, I can’t, I can’t do it. I can’t do it.’ Doesn’t have enough money. But now they’re gonna look. They’re gonna look everywhere. They’re gonna be looking so hard, so hard. They’re gonna send Liam Neeson. I’ve been taken. I’ve been taken, and he will use this particular set of skills to find me.”
And Noah’s particular set of skills — impressive verbal gymnastics matched with considerable wit, consummate charisma and charm, and a global perspective — definitely made for an enjoyable evening of comedy.
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