Eddie Izzard Comes to Big Apple

By Matt Wolf

LONDON (Variety) - Everything's coming up Eddie, or that's how it may look later this season in New York, with British comedian (and occasional transvestite) Eddie Izzard planning two separate Off Broadway stints. Encouraged by the sellout success last year of his New York debut at PS 122, Izzard returns there Sept. 24 for three weeks to launch an international tour of his new show, "Glorious." In the spring, he opens an entirely different show, as yet untitled, for a commercial Off Broadway run co-produced by U.K.-based Pola Jones and Peter Holmes a Court's Back Row Prods. in New York. "It's universal humor -- that was the thing I was trying to do," says Izzard, explaining why his brand of comedy travels when that of certain colleagues (Rowan Atkinson most famously, at least on the New York stage) has not. "It's not very London-centric. I don't have jokes about red buses and phone boxes." Before both appearances, Izzard, 35, will attempt to raise his film profile as second baddie to Sean Connery in the Ralph Fiennes-Uma Thurman starrer The Avengers. "I fight Ralph, I fight Uma," says Izzard, sounding somewhat nonplussed. "I just fight everyone." Contributed by Elizabeth Parker