2008 US WARM UP DATES

UK REVIEWS/INTERVIEWS

Newspaper Review (thanks Drilling Cat!)

Wales:

Eddie Izzard
Blake Theatre, Monmouth 3:02pm Monday
17th November 2008
By Maria Williams | SouthWalesArgus.co.uk

THE self-styled action transvestite was off duty as a bearded Eddie Izzard stalked onto the stage in jeans and a tailcoat. Fresh from Hollywood success, Izzard was back to his stand-up roots with his Strict Tour, which is soon set to transfer to London’s West End. He was on great stream-of- consciousness form at his sell-out show in Monmouth. His set was littered with characters such as Noah and his wife Margaret, cannabis-smoking assassins, the traumatised squirrel and a jazz chicken. The crowd was watching a master stand-up comic at the peak of his talent, not even being thrown when logging on to Wikipedia with his 3G phone to look up Symonds Yat to discover that the man who wrote the web entry was in the audience. Izzard’s scenes were big – religion, science and why we are all here, but he never veered into preachy agit prop – Izzard’s world of the absurd was enough to seduce any crowd to his ideas. Beneath it all, there was a streak of humanism a mile wide in his thoughts. Little wonder he left the stage to such rapturous applause.

Cornwall:
Eddie Izzard Wows the Hall for Cornwall
Review by Lee Trewhela

WHAT a thrill for a comedian of Eddie Izzard's stature to be playing Truro – and he didn't disappoint.

Although, his rambling, largely ad-libbed socio-political fop on acid schtick can lead to as many troughs as peaks.

Eddie chose to play in Cornwall as an old friend, Catherine Bicknell, who lives in Feock and happens to be a colleague of mine, suggested it. Simple as that.

Along with a few other low-key warm-up gigs across the country, this was a try-out for his stand-up show Stripped which starts a run in the West End soon and has already toured America.

No laughing at the minutiae of day-to-day life for Eddie, this was a look at the big themes – basically, that there is no God.

So we went from Noah, dinosaurs and the Stone Age, through to the Greeks and Romans.

Eddie questioned the presence of an omnipotent power with the help of a squirrel who seemed to have come from The Bronx and Charles Darwin's well-known theory of evolution, Monkey, Monkey, Monkey, YOU!

His previous look at gender politics was missing – there was one brief mention of his transvestism but he was dressed more like an ageing yet sexy rock star than Marilyn Monroe.

There were highs – an exaggerated study of tennis players' pornographic grunts and groans was tear-inducingly hilarious.

But there were also dips where his surreal ramblings didn't quite hit the mark, especially a plain bizarre encore about the moon. But when you consider that the majority of the two-hour performance is ad-libbed then we can do nothing but bow down to Eddie's astonishing talent.

It was all very entertaining and the audience was in rapture (especially at his recurring theme of mining tin, surfing on tin, tin hats etc etc). Let's hope his sell-out appearance leads to other big-name shows at the Hall.

Eddie told me before the show that he was seriously considering entering European politics, and with his strong socialist views and sheer charisma it wouldn't be beyond the realms of imagination to one day see him as president of the continent. A rambling fop of a president, mind.

US REVIEWS

New York:
" There are no words to describe Eddie Izzard's performance last night (Sunday, June 29) at Radio City Music Hall in New York City -- except for his words, which I can't reproduce here, because there were so many of them, delivered so precisely, so hysterically, that it boggled the mind. Plus, you really have to hear him say them, and watch his incredibly mobile features and his incredibly mischievous eyes as he speaks them. And his body language. That's a language that stands on its own. Imitating the Rockettes. And monkeys. And dinosaurs, and out-of-breath Roman messengers who had trouble with their Latin declensions and tenses and couldn't find the right words to tell the battle commander that Hannibal was on his way through the Alps to attack them. . . . with elephants . . . that look like big pigs with squirrels draped over their faces. When it was over, two solid hours after it started, with no intermission, with Eddie talking consistently at 500 mph and never missing a beat, I was exhausted. But HE had the energy at the curtain call, after the encore, to run up 2.5 flights of stairs on the left side of the hall to take a bow from a balcony, run back down and across the stage, and then up 2.5 flights of stairs on the right side of the hall for another bow, and down back to the stage. The show was beyond brilliant. If you live in the US, find a way to see him -- he'll be out West for July and early August. " -- Peggie

Indianpolis:
"It started with a roar and the audience lept to it's feet. Really a roar. I was surprised and I was there. Eddie came out and bowed and the roar went up again. He said "you know after a welcome like that it's like AHHHH1" After that the whole thing went of really well. At one point he made a bad pun and the whole audience groaned, Eddie froze and flipped us a slow circular bird then went back to the show. Outside, there was a line waiting for him that reached from the entrance to the back door. I didn't get to stay but as usual Eddie kills. " -- Joy