Just a few years ago, Eddie Izzard was working in smallish downtown Manhattan venues, but now he looks right at home in the vast expanse of Madison Square Garden in the comedy special debuting today on the various EPIX cable platforms.
“Eddie Izzard — Live! at Madison Square Garden” was recorded last winter in front of a packed and very lively house.
The British comic joins a very small group of stand-up artists who have been able to fill the same huge sports arenas that book pop stars such as Madonna and U2. He’s done Wembley Arena back home in London and MSG in Manhattan without losing any of his edge or his lightning-fast rhythms.
Izzard enters with the sort of pumped-up music and giant video screens that are necessary to grab a huge crowd, but he holds them with a far-ranging 90-minute set that jumps from the expected — the differences between Brits and Americans — to a risky and extended takedown of the whole notion of God.
A few days before the show, Izzard told a British newspaper that he has learned from the big music acts that you have to “own” any stage you play on.
“We use PAs, like the lead singer we sing down the microphone to connect with the audience, but we are putting forward ideas, and I’m acting out weird scenes, which is a different place. But it’s about owning the stage, that’s what you can learn,” he said.
“We have to own the stage, because we’ve got no f—–g back up, we’re just naked. You’ve got to be so big, so confident, and have it in the pit of your stomach, that’s where you’ve got to send out the confidence from.”
Izzard has been called “the human search engine” so it seems apropos that he devotes part of his set to the wonders of the Internet.
The comic does a funny bit on all of those “terms and conditions” boxes we’ve checked over the past few years “when the truth is no one has ever read the terms and conditions!”
Izzard seems to combine the best of the old warm and anecdotal comedians — he does a long section about Noah and his ark that summons up memories of Bill Cosby — with more abrasive commentary on some of the maddest elements of the modern world.
Because he is a good actor as well as a comedian, the way Izzard performs the material is just as important as the content, so it’s impossible to boil one of his shows down to a few punchlines.
“Live! at Madison Square Garden” proves that what Izzard has lost in terms of intimacy over the past decade he has more than made up for in showmanship.
