Comedy review: Eddie Izzard, Aotea Centre

Comedian Eddie Izzard.

Early on in Eddie Izzard's performance, one of two in Auckland before his 26-country Force Majeur tour returns him to the UK, there was the matter of the pesky fly. It circled erratically and threatened to land on his flawless suit as he swatted at it with blood red nails.

The fly was fast but not as fast as Izzard, whose mind worked so quickly his mouth often struggled to keep up. Many of his punchlines hurtled out like knowing afterthoughts, or as verbal ping pong.

Izzard played a screed of sparring characters, his Death Star Canteen, or God meets Darth Vadar in the lunchroom, a particular highlight. It was a familiar skit the sell-out crowd were eager to hear, but Izzard was smart enough not to have to rely on old material. Nor does he lean too much on tales about himself - when he does it's often self-deprecating.

The multilingual comedian and avid runner reckons he'd been around since the days of horses and carts; recently he's starred in TV series Hannibal and The United States of Tara. But by the time he'd swatted away the insect, become a bossy chicken, a hoity toity horse, a wayward elephant, a dumb dog and an unfit lion, he'd reminded us why he really belongs on the stage.

It wasn't all horseplay, even if his dressage act was a winner. Izzard is strictly anti-idiot, proving that the best comedy often comes from a critical mind.

"Follow my logic," was a common refrain as he took the audience on a wild narrative ride, threading details throughout his multilayered stories, which grew increasingly amusing and bizarre.

While his take on English and Roman history wasn't always laugh-out-loud, (and his spiral background image was often blinding), Izzard got funnier as the night wore on, tackling the ridiculousness of human sacrifice, religion and the curious parallels between the Indian and Welsh accents. All of these were acted out with the help of his natural theatrics, sound effects and his own made-up dialect.

Things are "easy peasy or hardly pardly"; he notices things with his "noticey face". A cute way to get his real message across: we should embrace wisdom, celebrate humanity and shun stupidity. Amen to that.

What: Eddie Izzard
Where: Aotea Centre

- nzherald.co.nz