The Mamba brand has become one of the sure fire mechanisms to get bums on theatre seats and this “director’s cut” doesn’t disappoint.

“Best of Mamba: Director’s Cut”, written by John van de Ruit, Ben Voss and James Cuningham, and performed by Ben Voss and James Cuningham. Original direction by Murray McGibbon, produced in association with Daphne Kuhn. (Theatre on the Square, Sandton. 011 883 8606). Until March 15.

John van de Ruit (of “Spud” fame) and Ben Voss cooked together a rich bouquet of political spoof and current humour in 2002. Who would have thought it would have grown sufficient muscle to continue entertaining audiences a good six years down the line, and is still going strong? Like much political humour in this country, Mamba’s come into its own.

The Director’s Cut is as acerbic and funny as ever; as the title of the show implies, the bulk of its content comprises sketches you might have seen before in Green and Black Mambas respectively. Some are a little tightened, updated, tweaked in terms of the cockermaimey realities we get to live by, grist for the humour mill of van de Ruit and Voss.

James Cuningham replaces van de Ruit in this production; he slips into his shoes with ease, offering his own hilarious dead-pan take on the gags, presenting a crazy little mimed prologue advising audiences that in the event of a shed load, wearable headlights will appear from the ceiling, enabling them to continue watching as though nought were amiss.

The trouble with a show of this nature is its tendency to date - how many times can former health minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang’s monumental cock ups in the public domain with regard to Aids policy still crack a smile? Can we still laugh out loud at Derek Watts’s hairdo? There is some fresh new material, engaging fabulously with characteristic Mamba abandon at the ludicrousness of our street name changes and the fashions of Christian names for black youngsters. The dress changes in the show are stitched together with spoofs on phoning the authorities in the event of a real crisis. And there’s a sketch on the history of South Africa, which skirts engagingly with political below-the-belt status, but delights in its flippancy.

Disappointingly, the two old ladies, from one of the Mambas, discussing morality, didn’t make this cut. A lot of the material is focused on actuality shows and the innuendoes infused in the different use of words as doing words or naming words, or both concurrently, is fabulous.

Pieter-Dirk Uys wrote and performed this type of material long before it was fashionable or permissible. The award-winning Mamba duo don’t mimic him, they have their own way of making you laugh at loud at obscenity, politics and social stereotypes, thus enriching the genre in SA, and with democracy alive and well here for the time being, this type of humour is not only plentiful, but firmly part of our culture in being able to take the piss out of our leaders on a domain public enough to sidestep punishment for flagrant disrespect and get said leaders, maybe, to laugh a little at themselves.

If you’re a Mamba aficionado or a Mamba virgin, this show’s for you.