Andrew Buckland’s gracefully funny appeal for humans to stop acting the fool

It starts with a chair, the only prop Andrew Buckland uses throughout the entire performance.

Only, it’s not merely a chair, it’s a car, and it’s involved in a high-speed race akin to something straight out of Fast & Furious. Only, of course, no special effects, no CGI, no stunt doubles, no quick-cut editing. Nothing, in fact, other than Buckland’s whimsical imagination and an ability to fashion entire worlds with words and movements, gestures and mime.

And, in the driver’s seat, it’s not Vin Diesel but rather Buckland’s version of an everyday hero named Milton, on a mission to rescue his son, an online sensation named Billy Yonaire.

Billy’s been ensnared in the evil clutches of the TechBro Overlords, essentially a detestable bunch of alpha males, all named Chad, who – in Buckland’s latest one-man physical comedy, A Fool’s Guide …to Living and Dying…, are conspiring to take over the world.

Of course, this being the richly textured imagination of a master storyteller, it’s not enough that one car is speeding towards a date with destiny. No sooner are we gripped by Milton’s urgent bid to save Billy than there is a second car and in it a woman having one hell of a funny argument with the self-driving technology that’s doing her bidding.

The woman is an influencer with an online show and, as she zips along, is simultaneously generating “amazing content” for her live-streaming fans.

And, perched on the passenger seat alongside her, a tea-cup Yorkie with severe anger issues, who will at some point in the unfolding adventure be found to have ties with Cerberus, the mythical three-headed dog who guards the gates of the Underworld. You’ll need to pay sharp attention to catch the connection, though, since Buckland’s comedy is pretty fast and delightfully furious.

All of these characters, plus plenty more – including supernatural beings and what is undoubtedly the world’s most adorable sentient robot vacuum cleaner – are performed by Buckland, each of them activated with incredible virtuosity, their complex backstories and elaborate personalities skilfully etched out thanks to the delicately coloured-in nuances that are Buckland’s stock-in-trade.

It’s not only a bewildering cast of characters he’s created but also a vast and elaborate story world that’s coaxed into existence – again, everything emanating from Buckland’s voice, his facial expressions, his nimble, agile body and his irrepressible imagination.

He doesn’t simply come up with fantastical ideas, he constantly raises the stakes, gets his characters into increasingly bizarre and frequently off-the-wall situations, ensuring that each scene is somehow followed by one that is even more ridiculous, more astonishingly funny than what’s gone before.

There is a journey to the Underworld, complete with time spent getting to know Death, who turns out to be misunderstood and entirely affable, and there are various scallywags and evildoers conjured out of the fabric of modern life with its influencer culture, addictive social media and rapidly deploying AI agents.

And, just when you think you’ve seen it all, there’s a bit of a love affair between that aforementioned robo-vacuum and that vicious little Yorkie, and there is a Mission Impossible-type heist that absolutely keeps you on the edge of your seat.

No synopsis or list of its madcap scenes can, however, do adequate justice to the sheer audaciousness of the off-the-wall plot with its sudden swerves and its wondrous intermingling of ideas that are at one moment inspired by classical antiquity and the next seem like plausible components of a science-fiction thriller set in a slightly post-apocalyptic version of the very weird reality that is unfolding around us right now.

As a parody of contemporary life, there’s a genuine sense of urgency to this play, addressing as it does so many of the social maladies we seem to be inviting into our lives, not least of which is our willingness to hand over our autonomy to the gadgets and algorithms that, in return for our undivided attention, promise little more than a relentless flow of dopamine.

Much of the pleasure that’s to be derived from The Fool’s Guide is just how masterfully Buckland weaves together disparate strands of our present unravelling.

He sees so clearly the links between, for example, our voracious appetite for AI-generated brain-rot slop and the rise of influencer culture, or the ceaseless tide of disinformation and our unquestioning handover of personal data. Never mind the algorithms cosplaying human emotions and the proliferation of deepfakes muddling the edges of fact and fiction.

And while it is satire at its most critical and unsparing, there’s far more to it than critique.

In the process of having us laugh at the unforeseen consequences of unchecked technological “progress”, Buckland’s story reflexively reminds us of a valuable piece of ancient knowledge about the cycle of life – and that death, ultimately, is a natural part of that cycle.

As the longevity billionaire bros of Silicon Valley are increasingly espousing the possibility of eternal life, in this simple, non-polluting, non-carbon-emitting one-man play, Buckland reflects on the clean and ecologically sound principle of human recycling that has prevailed throughout time: That each of us is made of dust, and to dust we should return.

While The Fool’s Guide is genuinely cerebral entertainment, it is never without heart.

As much as it is a warning that we are in danger of relinquishing our humanity, at its core it is also a profoundly stirring, deeply intimate account of a man’s incredible love for his son and his willingness to go to the ends of the Earth – and beyond – to protect him.

In this endeavour to bring some light into the world, Buckland does not merely transport you, he raises your spirit, creates magic in the room, makes you remember how cool it is to be a living, breathing, feeling human being capable of thought, imagination and original ideas.

And what’s important, too, is that he is 100% the real thing – a one-of-a-kind artist inside a genuine human meat suit, and living proof that there are certain things in this world for which there is no automated, algorithmic or AI-generated substitute. DM

Directed by Janet Buckland and starring Andrew Buckland, The Fool’s Guide can be seen on 1 and 2 May as part of Suidoosterfees, an annual arts festival that runs in Cape Town through 3 May.