SHOW: Nando’s Jozi Comedy Festival: United Nations of Comedy - Comedy is a matter of taste and the brew dished up by the various clowns who occupied the stage at the Teatro was, in most cases, not to my taste, writes Peter Feldman

PERFORMERS: Jonathon Arons, Trevor Noah, Mo Mandel, Bobby Lee, Kira Soltanovich, Eugene Khoza, Pablo Francisco

VENUE: Teatro, Montecasino, Fourways, until August 1.

It seems new comedy is all about vulgarity, crude expletives, bodily functions and sex, and the young audience lapped it up.

This is obviously the target market, but I find it cheap and nasty.

Opening act Jonathan Arons, who did some funny things on a trombone, accompanied by appropriate contortions, provided some- thing fresh, but the remainder left much to be desired.

The local contingent comprised MC Trevor Noah, who is stylish and very good, except some of his routines can be pruned somewhat, and motor-mouth Eugene Khoza, who needs to acquaint himself with pace and timing.

The international comedy names were a varied bunch.

Mo Mandel, who stepped off an airplane just hours earlier, apparently, adopts that aggressive, attacking New York style where he is the boss. Nobody messes with him.

His take on America, visiting SA for the first time and other acute observations on life and living managed to elicit a few chuckles.

Korean dumpling Bobby Lee was too occupied with his own plump belly and depictions of some sex variations to leave an impact, though his routines do involve a lot of screeching and plenty of physical gymnastics.

There was one female, Kira Soltanovich, a strident American Jewess of Polish extraction who informed us that she is married to an Irish Roman Catholic.

She is heavily pregnant and, as is to be expected, her humour revolved around sex and her pregnancy, with lines delivered at a rate of knots.

The headline act, Chilean comedian Pablo Francisco, was by far the funniest and most inventive of the bunch, creating different voices for a batch of personalities – some famous – and in the process supplying a barrage of sound effects that reverberated around the theatre.

He ran a full gamut of jokes that covered some hot subjects and his inspiring take on mundane topics proved hilarious. He was a hit.