Fear and Laughing in South Africa

Few people could show the South African Parliament what not to do with a banana and a condom — and get a standing ovation. But political satirist and provocateur Pieter-Dirk Uys did just that with a special parliamentary performance of his one-man show Foreign Aids earlier this year. And at London's Tricycle Theatre this week, audiences are responding as enthusiastically to the play, in which Uys transforms himself into a handful of characters — or caricatures — to expose the hypocrisy and ignorance surrounding Africa's AIDS crisis.

His onstage incarnations include Dr. Thaboo MacBeki — any resemblance...