Izzard Takes NYC By Storm
By Oliver Ludwig
Reuters
Contributed by Elizabeth Parker & Jodie Miller
New York City
Once Eddie Izzard finishes winning over
New York audiences with his one-man stand-up act and his
dazzling purple fingernail polish, the English comedian will
start working on getting a gig in, of all places, Moscow.
If anyone is up to the challenge of using English to tickle
the funny bones of Muscovites, it is Eddie Izzard, whom fellow
British comic John Cleese considers the funniest man in England
today. Izzard has already dared to bring stand-up to France,
where he says the comedic form does not really exist, and even
has the audacity to perform there in French.
He recognizes few cultural boundaries when it comes to
humor, insisting he can find common ground with at least some of
the people in just about any place on Earth. Actually, the word
stand-up does not quite do justice to how Izzard draws his
audiences into his world and then leaves them bent over with
laughter. For one thing, he is a lot nicer than most stand-up
comics, so no one gets picked on.
He seems to be enjoying himself so much it is hard not to
join the fun. And he sets a special tone ahead of his shows and
during intermission, using rocking dance tracks and flashy disco
lights so that all seems perfectly normal when he strolls
insouciantly onstage dressed in varying degrees of feminine
attire. He is, after all, a transvestite, or "TV" as he
sometimes describes himself.
"It's a mixture of theater and rock 'n' roll with stand-up
thrown into the middle of it," Izzard told Reuters in an
interview in New York, where he is performing his latest show
"Dress To Kill."
CAREFULLY CRAFTED RUBBISH
Izzard's feminine get-up -- in the latest show he dresses
all in black with a Jean Paul Gaultier Chinese house coat, vinyl
pants and high-heeled open-toed sandals that reveal vampy
toenail polish -- has almost nothing to do with his humor.
His humor rarely touches on sexuality except, for example,
when he calls himself a "male lesbian" or describes his youth
as a "male tomboy" fancying not only soccer but also girls and
more than a little makeup too.
He says he is part of a nonsexist, nonracist alternative
comedy scene that developed in England in the late 1970s, which
may explain why his almost childlike persona lacks the hostile
or cynical edge favored by so many stand-up comics.
His passion is for what he calls "carefully crafted
rubbish," a broad category of material that includes everything
from politics and history to religion and pop culture. "I like
to take big ideas and talk about them so that it seems like I
don't know what I'm talking about even though I know what I'm
talking about," he said.
Izzard seems relieved that so few stand up comics mine world
history for the rich material it provides him, and he insists he
can make any audience laugh using historical events as long as
he begins his joking with a little background.
"I don't really see people saying, 'Anyway, so Alexander
the Great, he was steaming into Persia, OK?"' Izzard said, his
gray-blue eyes brightening. "No one goes into that. But you can
make it come alive. You've just got to explain it."
In "Dress To Kill," Izzard explores Henry VIII's problems,
the origins of Easter eggs and the Easter bunny, the 1969 moon
landing by American astronauts, the brainstorming that came up
with the name of singer Engelbert Humperdinck and one subject he
finds especially humorous, the origins of the prehistoric stone
formations at Stonehenge in England.
In that hilarious bit he portrays the anguished workers
carrying the huge stones, then switches to playing a modern
architect type who cheerfully tells the miserable workers:
"Don't worry you'll really like it. It's going to look great."
FROM MOSCOW TO 'FRISCO'
Izzard is also starting to appear in films this year,
including "The Avengers" opposite Sean Connery, but it is
clear he wants to build on his stage show rather than appear in
television comedies.
"Dress To Kill," his second New York show in less than a
year, has twice been extended for a total of more than eight
weeks at the Westbeth Theatre in Greenwich Village and he is
thinking of new places he can perform his shtick such as Moscow
and San Francisco once the show wraps up in early June.
"Next year I hope to do 'From Moscow to Frisco,"' Izzard
said, unveiling the working title of the show. As long as he
plays the right venues, such as universities where young people
are hungry for learning English and a bit of fun, everything
will turn out right in Moscow or any other city, he says.
Izzard's remarkable optimism goes well beyond his ambition
to perform in unlikely places, extending into areas like
Europe's ongoing economic and political integration which,
unlike many British citizens, he supports wholeheartedly.
"What I'm doing in going and playing France with my
carefully crafted rubbish that's translated into French just
shows what Europeans could do if they put their minds to it.I'm
a very 'cup half-full' person," he said, quickly reconsidering
his answer. "I'm a cup three-quarters full person. No,
actually, the cup's overflowing."
FUNNIEST MAN IN ENGLAND
John Cleese, the backbone of the English comedy troupe Monty
Python that gave Izzard some of the inspiration to quit college
and perform full time, agrees, saying Izzard's good nature sets
him apart from most other stand-up comics.
"What is unusual about Eddie is that most comics are a
depressed, angry and maladjusted bunch by and large, and he is
as low on anger and resentment as any comic I've ever seen,"
Cleese said in a telephone interview during which he often broke
into laughter as he talked about Izzard.
"He also has an extraordinary degree of relaxation and in
that he reminds me of the old vaudeville performers," Cleese
said, adding that he now knows Izzard well enough to see that
the relaxation is genuine and not a put-on.
He said Izzard's extraordinary relaxation may explain why
the laughs start almost the moment he arrives onstage. "Going
on so relaxed you catch the mood of the audience instead of
imposing it on them," Cleese said, adding that many other
stand-up comics feign relaxation.
"I think he has made me laugh more than anyone else in
England in the last two or three years. I've been in comedy for
over 30 years and by the end of it you've seen a lot of stuff.
It's very very unusual to see something fresh like Eddie."
Cleese does have one criticism. He says Izzard's penchant
for spontaneity hurts his comic timing and that just a slightly
tighter script would make him even funnier. "What he loves more
than anything is not knowing what he's going to do next."
Izzard seems to agree, saying he makes each show different
just so he does not grow bored. "Every night is about 10 to 15
percent different. It's a big journey between two places, the
beginning and the end, and I can go off on any tangent at any
point."
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