Schalk Bezuidenhout
Live at The Bruce Mason Centre
13 March 2025
Live Review by Music Journalist: Paul Marshall
From Basement Stages to Sold-Out Theatres: Schalk Bezuidenhout Brings ‘Hey Hey Divorcé’ to Auckland.
There’s something special about watching a comedian’s trajectory from a cramped basement stage to a packed theatre. It’s the kind of journey rock journalists love to chart with bands, and tonight felt no different.
My relationship with Schalk Bezuidenhout began two years ago in a dingy little basement theatre in Auckland. Thirty seats at most. I was front row, dead centre. Out walked this scrawny, funny, looking guy with a refined South African accent and a wild mop of hair that seemed to have its own personality. Within minutes the room was in hysterics.
Fast forward to tonight and that same man is commanding the stage of the Bruce Mason Centre, playing to hundreds rather than dozens. It’s the same comedian, just amplified.
And deservedly so.
Bezuidenhout, who first stepped onto a stand-up stage in 2011 after studying drama in Cape Town, has steadily built a reputation as one of South Africa’s most distinctive comedic voices, earning specials on Netflix and Comedy Central and even opening arena tours for fellow countryman Trevor Noah.
But statistics and career highlights only tell part of the story.
What makes Bezuidenhout compelling is perspective.
Even before the official start, the night took an unexpected turn.
Just as I was finding my seat, the theatre plunged into complete darkness. Not dim lights, blackout. The kind where you’re navigating aisles by instinct and prayer.
Then suddenly Bezuidenhout appeared on stage.
“Don’t worry,” he assured us, “this isn’t the show.”
Instead, what followed was an absurd little prologue. He threw a T-shirt into the crowd, handed out flowers like a slightly deranged game show host, and invited a bewildered audience member onstage so he could whisper something conspiratorial into their ear.
Then, as quickly as he appeared, he vanished.
A perfect piece of comedic misdirection.
When Bezuidenhout returned for real, the applause was thunderous.
His current show, Hey Hey Divorcé, is built around the emotional wreckage and comedic gold of his recent divorce. The premise is simple: therapy is expensive, so he’s processing it with a room full of strangers.
The 33 jaar oud, Bezuidenhout has already accumulated a lifetime’s worth of observational material, and he delivers it with rapid-fire timing and a theatrical physicality that borders on manic brilliance.
One moment he’s recounting reading his own wedding vows, “because that’s where it all started to go wrong” and the next he’s mining the audience for comedy gold. When a woman in the front row quietly slips out, head down, trying not to disturb anyone as she heads for the bar or the toilets, Bezuidenhout spots her immediately and pounces.
“You know we can still see you,” he says.
The room erupts. It’s pure, on-the-spot, impromptu comedy gold.
A particularly outrageous segment imagines being invited to Jeffrey Epstein’s infamous island. Not in the sinister way you might expect, but purely for the photo opportunity.
“Imagine,” Bezuidenhout says, contorting himself into a ridiculous pose, “standing on the beach between Epstein and Donald Trump.”
The crowd collapses.
It’s near-the-bone humour, but delivered with such self-aware absurdity that it lands exactly where it should.
What makes Bezuidenhout particularly effective with New Zealand audiences is his awareness of cultural context.
Yes, there are South African references. Yes, there are Afrikaans phrases scattered throughout the show. But he never leaves the audience behind. If anything, he seems delighted to translate and explain these little cultural quirks for us “mere mortals” on this side of the Indian Ocean.
It’s a small thing, but it shows respect, something not every international comic bothers with.
And it’s part of what makes his observational humour so accessible.
Like the great stand-up storytellers before him, Bezuidenhout’s comedy is built on noticing the ridiculous details of life and delivering them with impeccable timing.
After the show I managed to catch up with Bezuidenhout and introduce him to a few friends I’d dragged along.
“I won’t be back in New Zealand for some time,” he told me.
His current tour will keep him travelling the globe for the next year, hitting Europe, Australia and beyond.
And after that?
Time off.
Not to rest, but to write.
It sounds strange to anyone outside the entertainment world, but writing new comedy is real work. When a comedian becomes this popular, the schedule becomes relentless: performing, media interviews, flights, hotels, repeat. The machine demands to be fed.
And that leaves very little time for the one thing that made it all possible in the first place, new material.
Watching Schalk Bezuidenhout tonight felt like watching a band just before they become arena giants.
The rawness is still there. The curiosity. The slightly chaotic energy that makes live comedy thrilling.
But the rooms are getting bigger.
And deservedly so.
If anything, I’d like to see Bezuidenhout take that time off he talked about, lock himself away somewhere quiet and come back with another hour plus of sharp, fearless storytelling.
Because comedians with this kind of instinct don’t come along every day.
And when they do, you follow them, from basement rooms with thirty seats… all the way to sold-out theatres.
Reviewer: Paul Marshall
Photography by Paul Marshall