Trevor Noah: Back to Abnormal, O2 Arena, review: few comics can hold an arena-sized crowd so well

The world tour is a tricky proposition for comedians. A joke that works in one town won’t necessarily land in another – let alone in a different country. On Jerry Seinfeld’s last visit to London, for instance, his gags about obscure American food brands turned out to have gone stale in transit.

But you could never accuse Trevor Noah – who speaks something like eight languages – of getting lost in translation. Though only in the UK for two shows, on Friday the South African comic delivered a set palpably tailor-made for the occasion. A tight opening half-hour took in everything from his disappointment with punting in Cambridge to a peculiarly English strain of faux-pained apology, via more obvious big topics (the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, racist football fans).

The 37-year-old has become a household name in the US since replacing Jon Stewart as the host of Comedy Central’s Daily Show in 2015. Unlike the crusading, heart-on-sleeve Stewart, Noah is a comic with a light touch: soft-spoken, wry and unflustered, never showily clever-clever but always giving the impression of a keen intelligence whirring under the surface.

Having left Johannesburg for the US in 2011, he brings an international perspective to his topical satire. The sharpest routine in this new touring show, Back to Abnormal, involves the patronising way the world’s media reported on Africa when it was in the grips of the Ebola virus – and how the continent’s sensible response to Covid has put the shoe on the other foot. Noah adopts the persona of an African TV presenter, deploying the same rhetoric once levelled at Africa to instead tut at American mask refuseniks and British 5G conspiracy nutters: “You see, in the West they do not understand sanitary procedures. These are primitive societies – some of them are saying cell phone towers caused the disease.”

Noah has a flair for physical comedy – I don’t think I’ll ever forget his body-popping impression of how Olympic “butterfly” swimming could be applied to running. But the strongest weapon in his comic arsenal is a gift for accents. One of his most celebrated old stand-up bits (revived for this tour) involves him learning German, only to discover – while trying to place an order in a German sandwich shop – that he speaks it with the exact cadence and intonation of Hitler.

Over the course of the evening, he flits between at least two dozen distinctly different voices (including a pair of very English dinosaurs), casually dropping in a couple of political impressions. His Boris Johnson isn’t quite spot on, but his Trump is one of the funniest I’ve heard, drawling like a 45 RPM record accidentally played at 33.

His desire to show off that globe-trotting vocal mimicry can lead him into hacky national stereotyping: only the Germans could have come up with schadenfreude; the French are so aloof it’s “no wonder they never won any wars”, etc. But if the broad outlines of his observations are often familiar, and the punchlines visible a long way off, he’s such a preternaturally charming performer it’s easy to forgive him. There are few comics who can hold a crowd this adeptly for a full two hours, not least in the O2 – a ghastly barn of a venue where even good jokes often fall flat.

Still, amid the generalisations about countries, races and cultures, I wouldn’t have minded more personal material. Noah’s life story is extraordinary: a film is in development based on his acclaimed memoir Born a Crime, about being born to a Swiss-German father and Xhosa South African mother under Apartheid. More on that next time, please.

Trevor Noah is at the O2, London, Sept 11 2021, and the SSE Hydro, Glasgow, Nov 21 2023; trevornoah.com