Eddie Izzard – “Stripped” Tour – Belfast Odyssey – 12th December
2009
In a hungover state and with less than an hour’s sleep due to my own issues with self-loathing, I was shambling my way towards The Odyssey to see “Stripped”, Eddie Izzard’s first live tour in six years. Having done a stand-up spot the previous evening (self-loathing, remember?), I prepared myself to watch one of the world’s most recognisable comedians seamlessly glide through his trademark unique and surreal material with technical perfection. Or to have a laugh and enjoy myself, as I suspect most people were expecting.
After a short trailer for “The Eddie Izzard Story”, a film about Izzard’s career in stand-up comedy, an impressive lights show; something I may have appreciated more if I weren’t in such a dehydrated state – what with its’ brain-piercing capability, Izzard walked onto the stage to a very warm welcome from the virtually full Odyssey. After the usual house-keeping business of being positive about the venue, audience and city, mentioning his Sport Relief mega-marathon he completed earlier this year, he launched into his routine.
Izzard went about quickly explaining the backbone of the show, declaring his new-found Atheism, and de-bunking the existence of a God in a manner that only the most humourless evangelist couldn’t appreciate. While entertaining, the biggest laughs came from self-referential jibes at his older material, with a few mentions of being covered in bees and Mrs Badcrumble. By the interval, I wasn’t too sure if the transparent and sometimes clumsy shifts in topic were entirely entertaining, or dare I say it, worthy of foregoing criticism because it’s Izzard.
However, during the second half, it becomes obvious what he was doing in the first. Seemingly flat and uninspired gags an hour previous are referenced many hundreds of years later in Izzard’s bizarrely fluid comedic time-line of history, gaining multiple rounds of applause from the crowd. Recognition and joke call-backs are one of his trademark stand-up talents, and considering that the bulk of the show is about retrospective looking in an effort to better understand where we are now, it goes to show that Izzard has perfected this technique. Or perhaps people just found what he was saying amusing.
Ultimately I would say that your average punter would have been very pleased by this show, if a die-hard Izzard fan can get by with just seeing one of their favourite comedians live, then they would be pleased. Having spoken to a few people since, it appears that the ones who know his career better than the average person have been the least bowled-over camp. One of the most technically perfect comedy routines I’ve seen in a long while, which is strange considering Izzard says a lot of it is improvised and written as he goes along. Izzard’s dresses and stilettos are gone and it would seem he’s left something intangible back in the “Dress To Kill” and “Glorious” days by becoming “Stripped”.
