After more than a year away from the stage, in what has been a strange year all round, British comedian Jack Whitehall is coming to Dubai to make us all laugh in 2021. Whitehall is due to perform at Dubai World Trade Centre on January 13 and 14, with a warm-up show on January 12 at the QE2,as part of Dubai Shopping Festival, and he can’t wait to be performing to more than his “bubble”.
“It’s going to be so exciting to be back performing in front of a live audience. It will have been nearly a year between my last tour date and this show in Dubai,” says Whitehall over – what is now the new normal – a Zoom call.
“Dubai is a place that I really wanted to come and do a show, and we had planned to do it as the final stop off on the tour and then the pandemic came, and obviously threw a bit of a spanner in the works. Finally for January 2021 we have been able to reschedule – meaning I will have done the longest tour in the history of comedy – albeit with quite a big gap between the penultimate and final gig.”
Over the past year he says he’s been doing “a little bit of comedy”, but the vital missing ingredient has been the most important one – an audience.
“I’ve done shows to empty theatres and empty studios, but I don’t think I’ve told a joke in front of an audience for a year,” he adds. “I’m really missing that energy of a live crowd and just hearing somebody laugh after you’ve told a joke, rather than telling a joke and then thinking well I guess they can add a laugh to that later. Hopefully I will remember how to make people laugh in real life…”.
The show is part of Whitehall’s Stood Up tour and is a welcome return to Dubai for the comic who previously performed in the city back in 2014 and 2017 with Jack Whitehall Goes Around and Jack White-hall: At Large tours.
“There will be a lot of brunch, some waterpark trips I’m sure, see what else the Dubai Shopping Festival has to offer too – hit up those sales,” he says. “I didn’t buy anything in the black Friday sales in the UK as I knew I was coming over, so I’ve kept my powder dry for this one.”
And what can the audience look forward to from the show? “I will try to mix it up with observation material, some anecdotes, I’m always quite indiscreet about my life – share as much as I can on stage,” he says.
“It’s an insight into who I am. I’m sure it will be great – I’m sure people will be happy to be at a show and gig, experiencing live comedy again. I mean, I’ll also be good – I don’t just want it to be like ‘this is fun because we’re here, this is great it’s just nice to be out of the house’, I’ll do some jokes.”
Comedy fans will know him from both his stand-up as well as from TV shows including Fresh Meat, Decline & Fall and Bad Education as well for appearances in A League of Their Own, Mock The Week and 8 out of 10 Cats.
Most recently he’s been starring in Jack Whitehall: Travels With My Father, a Netflix series that launched in 2017 where he explores the world with his father Michael Whitehall, while he has an adventure film coming out with The Rock (“nice guy, works out a lot”) – Jungle Cruise – next year.
But despite his huge repertoire, it’s the stand-up he loves and has been missing the most.
“I am very excited to have some human contact,” he says. “I’ve just been living in my bubble, it’s just been six of us so it will be nice to see more than six people. Well, I hope there will be more than six people there.
“Live shows are always the best – they have that kind of sense of the unpredictable, something you can’t really recreate – the buzz of doing a live show and being in front of an audience. For all the TV shows and sitcoms, actually being up on stage with your audience, nothing really beats that.”
After a year like 2020, we’re in agreement.
To buy tickets for his January 13 show, visit 800tickets.com. Don’t miss it, it’s going to be huge.
From Dhs295. Jan 13 and 14 (14 sold-out). Dubai World Trade Centre, Sheikh Zayed Road, www.800tickets.com. Warm-up show, Jan 12, QE2 Dubai, Port Rashid, tickets on the Dubai Calendar app.
