Comedy: Hey hey, ek is geskei
10 October 16:30, 11 October 11:00
HMS Bloemhof-sentrum
Every comedy show is the same: People come, they laugh, they leave. Schalk Bezuidenhout just makes the middle bit feel like a group therapy session that happens to have a bar.
His latest comedy show, Hey hey, ek is geskei, performed at this year’s Toyota Stellenbosch Woordfees, centres on his recent divorce. He admits early on that talking about his divorce on stage in front of crowds of people is cheaper than therapy, and the show backs him up. One minute the room howls, and the next it is silent. Bezuidenhout swings between the two with the timing of a man who has had plenty of practice.
Schalk Bezuidenhout swapped the stage for a therapy session in his show Hey hey, ek is geskei at this year’s Toyota Stellenbosch Woordfees on 11 October. (This photo was taken at a Woordfees show in 2025). PHOTO: Supplied/Emma Wiehman
The stage comprises a rug, a microphone, and some mismatched lamps – about as much décor as a heartbreak needs. Then comes the real horror: Audience participation. Bezuidenhout hands out flowers and a handkerchief to unsuspecting audience members, only to snap the stems in a fit of theatrical rage and shreds the newspaper to a rock soundtrack.
There is a second intro, because one was not dramatic enough. Bezuidenhout whips off his shirt and whirls it around over his head. Bezuidenhout bills the show as his break-up album which starts with him reading his actual wedding speech, glass of red wine in hand, in English. His ex-wife was English, he admits, which he calls his first mistake. The Afrikaans crowd groans in unison.
His anger, however, is saved for a few very specific targets: The Ballito estate agent who sold him a dream home that turned out to be a zoo: Monkeys, snakes, and dog-snatching eagles. Then there is a scream, and a Comrades Marathon story that takes an unexpected detour into toilet talk. The tannies lose it. The ultra-marathon, for Bezuidenhout, works as self-punishment with a finishing medal.
Bezuidenhout touches on all the horrors of post-divorce life: The smug still-married friends dishing out dating advice, the modern dating pool and the phenomenon of “the ick”, and dating a younger woman along with all the generational gaps that come with it, to name a few. Meanwhile, his former wife remains unnamed, barely sketched and treated with real respect. It is a show about heartbreak that refuses to settle scores.
What makes it special is the restraint. Heartbreak has no business being this generous. Bezuidenhout has finally learned that stand-up is the mistress who never leaves, and affirms this with an impromptu vow-renewal with audience members.
He insists, somewhat ironically, that he is “good as hell”. By the end, it is believable. The show lands somewhere unexpectedly happy: No bitterness, just a man ready for love again.