It takes a lot to silence Marlon Wayans when he is in full flow. The American actor and stand-up comic is a zany force of nature in his movies and on stage, mixing off-the-cuff punchlines with sweat-inducing physical comedy.
Even as we chat, he is an energetic, vibrant presence as he reveals how pleased he is with the way his world tour has been going.
However, he stops dead in his tracks when I tell him the venue of his show in Abu Dhabi next week. “I am performing in a palace?” he asks, incredulously.
His solo show at the lavish Emirates Palace auditorium, part of Abu Dhabi Summer Season, is a far cry from the rather sterile Dubai World Trade Centre, where he performed in 2013 with his brother Shawn, not to mention the more intimate clubs in the United States where he has appeared.
The news of such a grand venue boosts his resolve to put on a great show even further – if that is possible.
“I had a great time when I was last in the country,” he says. “The people were awesome, they laughed a lot and they got a lot of the jokes. It was a really good time and I can’t wait to get back, do it all again and push it a little harder this time.”
The Wayans Brothers’ Dubai show featured two distinct comic personalities. Wayans has more racy material, delivered in a clipped, rapid-fire manner, while brother Shawn, who is a year older, brings a more refined, old-school sensibility to his approach.
This time, though, the Abu Dhabi audience will see a more fresh and balanced set from Wayans – because he has more time on stage.
“I am still off-the-cuff but I would say I am a bit more grounded now because I have a whole hour,” he says. “So there is a lot of zany stuff, but I do walk around and talk to people and do some classic stand-up – it is a very diversified show. There is a lot of new stuff and I am performing for about an hour. I would say at least 40 minutes will be new material.”
Wayans says the expanded format of a solo show gives him the freedom to dig deeper into topics. In one section, for example, he discusses the changing nature of hip-hop music. Where once the boastful lyrics were meant to show the genre’s aspirational nature, he says, now you have rappers and moguls such as Jay Z “just bragging to beats”.
“It is more of my point of view,” he says. “I feel like I can be more honest and get straight to the point. Also there are less boundaries, in that before I couldn’t talk about certain things because my brother would talk about that.”
Coming up with new material is clearly not a problem for Wayans. Since he entered the industry in 1988, he has written or co-written more than half of about 50 projects he has been part of for film and television.
The latest was the raunchy comedy, Fifty Shades of Black, another one of the trademark Wayans spoofs of a pop-culture juggernaut – in this case, last year's film adaptation of E L James's novel Fifty Shades of Grey.
In the Wayans version, Hanna (in the original film the character is called Ana), is a shy reporter who interviews entrepreneur Christian Black (Wayans, portraying a more comically lurid version of the original's Christian Grey). Despite only receiving a limited release, Fifty Shades of Black made a healthy US$20million (Dh73.45m) at the US box office from a $5m budget.
Wayans says that he doesn’t look for targets to skewer, and explains that the measure of a good spoof is whether the humour transcends the subject being satirised.
“It’s all about the jokes,” he says. “They need to be funny outside of the spoof, if you know what I mean. It needs to resonate way beyond that.”
He points to the wild box-office success of 2004's critically-panned White Chicks, in which he starred with Shawn as two cops who go undercover disguised as rich white women to bust a narcotics ring.
The film remains a calling card for the pair – it made more that $100m from a relatively modest $37m budget.
“You know, its funny: a lot of our movies get panned by the critics and they do so well,” he says. “The film has been out for more than 10 years and it just seems to gather more fans.
“I thinks that’s because it talks about pop culture, and there is also the situation comedy. The themes which we touched upon – everything from race to gender – also are just universal and remain relevant.”
Bad news for fans of the film, however – Wayans says that a much-rumoured sequel "is not happening". More laughs are on the way, though – Wayans is set to appear in a new sitcom, Marlon, from American broadcaster NBC, which is due next year.
With family members Keenen and Damon Wayans finding success leading their own TV projects – they teamed up for sketch comedy In Living Color (1990-1994) and Damon went on to co-create and star in My Wife and Kids (2001-2005) – hopes are high that Marlon could also be a ratings hit.
The success of the sprawling Wayans family members – across film, TV and stage – has them dubbed the “First Family of Comedy”. It’s a title Wayans welcomes.
“I definitely came from a school of talented people,” he says. “I feel like I just finished graduate school and I am moving on to become a professor. The best times are ahead of me and I am grateful to my fans and my family.”
• Marlon Wayans is at Emirates Palace, Abu Dhabi, on Friday. Tickets from Dh145 at www.platinumlist.net
sasaeed@thenational.ae