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Eoghan decided to test his French on the multi-lingual comedian… with mixed results…

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[from the latimes.com]

But could he have done it in heels?

On Wednesday night British performer Eddie Izzard became not only the first solo comedy act to appear at the Hollywood Bowl, but he also raised the performance bar all the way to where the Bowl ends and the night sky begins.

“Maybe I should do the gig here,” he mused as, moments after coming on stage for “Eddie Izzard: Stripped to the Bowl,” he edged along the narrow wall separating the Pool Circle from the rest of the box seats. “Or maybe,” he said, lifting his eyes to the cheering crowd of more than 12,000 that rose before him, “I should do it in the back.”

And then he was off, clambering over those right in front of him before jogging 115 feet from the stage to the promenade and then up the 168 steps that zigzag their way to the back row. Unlike previous tours, in which Izzard, who is a transvestite, took the stage in semi-drag, “Stripped” refers in part to his decision to go “bloke,” with jeans, a tuxedo jacket and, most important, men’s shoes.

As security bolted to keep up with him and the crowd cheered its approval, Izzard made impressive time — less than five minutes to make it to the top. “I don’t know if everyone can hear me,” he said into the microphone, “but this looks amazing.

“And,” he added, “this was not necessarily a good idea. I’m coming back down.”

Back onstage, he seemed only slightly winded — he has of late become a marathon runner — though he dramatically fell to his knees. “If you’re thinking of playing the Hollywood Bowl, don’t do what I just did,” he said. “That was my 50th birthday present to myself.

“As a street performer I learned that if you say something to the audience, you have to do it,” he added before suggesting to those in box seats that they use their time at intermission to jog up and take in the full open-sky glory of the Bowl.

It was a fine and physical endorsement of the Bowl, which Izzard, fresh off performances in Paris which he did tout en francaise, admitted was not as sexy a name as it might be “although you did tack Hollywood on which helps” but still hallowed ground. “Monty Python played here, and the Beatles.”

None of them ran the steps, of course, and certainly none began their sets by announcing, as Izzard did, that there is no God. The “Stripped” tour, which opened three years ago in London and made a stop at L.A.’s Nokia Theatre last January as “Stripped Too,” is quintessentially Izzard, a manic, psychedelic trip through pop culture and the annals of history, making random stops at Wikipedia, iTunes (“Who here has ever read the terms and conditions?”) the dinosaur age, the Stone Age, Shirley Temple, the Battle of Hastings, Nuremberg, the Romans, the Greeks and assassins on hashish.

But the show’s leitmotif is the absence of God, with frequent references to his Parisian tour and more than a few digs at Sarah Palin — “America, be very, very afraid.” Although, he concedes, God could be there, he probably isn’t, might be, definitely isn’t. Contradiction and outrageous contrast are what Izzard does best — in “Dressed to Kill,” the tour that launched him to stardom in the U.S., he introduced the term “action transvestite” to the lexicon. With “Stripped,” it’s “spiritual atheist.”

The Izzardian essentials, however, remain the same, the impressive tool belt of a former street performer which made him a perfect first solo act for the Bowl — Izzard may be one man, but he is many, many characters.

A gifted mime with the best sound effects in the business — a hilarious set exploring the many limitations of the dinosaurs included his interpretation of dinosaur poetry and dinosaur “administration” — Izzard, as action transvestite or bloke, remains a child at heart. Running and bouncing around, making fabulous noises (the recurring jazz chicken was particularly effective) and scribbling mental notes to himself on his hand, Izzard is, above all, a joyful performer, his comedy a boyish exploration of all the “how comes,” “what ifs” “why nots” and “but that doesn’t make any senses” that can drive a parent crazy on a hot summer day. If there is a God, how come he didn’t flick Hitler’s head off? If the world was assembled by intelligent design why did the dinosaurs never evolve? Who thought of naming a problem with understanding words “dyslexia? What if those iTunes terms and conditions include “we will cut off your buttocks and sell them to the Chinese”?

Embodying myriad human characters and animals as diverse as a speechless giraffe, a journaling giant squid and a squirrel that survived Noah’s ark (“it was a nightmare, man, like ‘Ghost Ship,’ without the gold”), Izzard had no problem filling the Bowl, with his sly wisdom and, more important, cascades of laughter. Though his timing flagged a bit after the intermission, he quickly found his footing and finished to roaring crowds. After one brief encore, he slipped quietly backstage without taking a victory lap. But then again, he didn’t need to.

[from sfweekly.com]

Saturday night’s Stripped on the Shore at Shoreline Amphitheater is a comedy act that’s been performed since 2008. But when the comedian is Eddie Izzard, that doesn’t mean much. The great British humorist who’s known for calmly pacing great expanses of stage during his routines is not known for sticking to a script. And, staying true to another part of his nature, Izzard tackled broad, serious subjects, so he had lots of figurative room to move in addition to the literal.

Against Earth-tone fabric backdrops branded with hieroglyphics, Hebrew, and Arabic, he summarized the history of civilization while also explaining his shift from agnostic to atheist. He built a case on the idea that God does not exist — or is, at best, a poor planner. He also took more detours than a sane mind can process, making for a dizzyingly funny monologue that didn’t come off like an anti-religious sermon.

Stripped was also a show that the incomprehensibly brave and self-proclaimed “transvestite with a career” serves up in full “boy mode,” meaning he traded in the shiny glam outfits and heavy lipstick that have characterized past performances to cut a chiseled and manly figure in simple, well-worn outfit of wrinkled jeans and black tails. All he currently retains from a girlier time is a sexy slick of black eyeliner.

Part of the transformation back into boy mode was a longing to take off the teetering stilettos and really get to feel grounded to the stage again, an important change for someone with such elastic physical comedic skill. He looked free and unfettered Saturday as he made good use (as expected) of the large stage.

One of Izzard’s many endearing qualities is when he talks to himself, rating how his jokes are doing with the audience. Saturday we learned, for example, that the mention of the Northern England town of Swindon gets laughs all around the world for some reason. Later, when he did a panto of himself and a sheep, ripping off his fleece – eliciting a collective shriek from the audience – he noted, “Shoreline is very susceptible to mimes.”

Despite referring to Mountain View as Palo Alto a few times, he kept a strong sense of place, weaving in a thread of tech talk. He playfully juxtaposed Macs and PCs, comparing the latter to a dusty old opera singer. Whenever he had a question he wanted to Google, he wondered aloud if he couldn’t just go knock on the office door to ask.

After an hour, Izzard explained that there would be an “interlude” and he’d step off for 12 or 14 minutes, which sped by with the screening of several cute fan-made YouTube videos that capture some of his most beloved classic bits, including one about the world’s easiest choice and another about Darth Vader’s frustrated lunch adventures.

Later we learned that merchandise booths were selling covet-worthy “Cake or Death” T-shirts and “I’m Jeff Vader” tote bags.

I’ve been an active attendee of concerts at Shoreline, and it was both refreshing and interesting to see a comedian rather than a mega rock star on stage coming alive in the open air and holding the place in thrall.

[from sfgate.com]

Five Clicks to Jesus is an Internet game in which players start on a randomly selected Wikipedia article – the entry for Kevin Bacon, perhaps – and then must navigate their way to the entry for Jesus by clicking five or fewer hyperlinks.

Eddie Izzard’s comedy is kind of like that. An Izzard joke that starts as a riff on the Heimlich maneuver can end up as a jab at the National Rifle Association. Chiropractor satire evolves into a routine about Scrabble. Discussions of human evolution segue into the lyrics from “I Can See Clearly Now.” Naturally.

This Saturday, Izzard will take a break from his dramatic roles, political ambitions, foreign-language gigs and marathon running to bring his scatterbrained stand-up shtick to the Shoreline in a show called “Stripped on the Shore.”

Q: What makes history funny to you? Were you a really good history student?

A: I was a not-good history student. The idea of arguing very lengthy things – like in the U.K. you seem to see the question “Why did the First World War start?” endlessly debated – always kind of floored me. I don’t think I find history funny, but I noticed that no one was doing it. And so I consciously pushed into it because I thought, that’s a good place to go and live. It’s more interesting than saying “men are like this, women are like this,” or talking about things on television programs.

Q: You’re just wrapping up a string of 21 gigs in Paris, performed in French. Does your sense of humor change when you do your routine in a foreign language?

A: No. This is my big theory: Senses of humor are exactly the same, but there are several senses of humor in each country. In the last 15 years, I’ve taken out all my references to local products in Britain or America. But I always start off by talking about the place I’m in. Like, after 13 weeks in Paris, I was talking about the sex shops on the Boulevard de Clichy. But I can’t use that anywhere else. I think the sense of humor is the same. I just plug into the people who like stuff like Monty Python in France, and off I go.

Q: You recently ran 43 marathons over the span of 52 days. What exactly compelled you to do that?

A: It’s just something I wanted to do. And I did it for a charity called Sport Relief. I was running with the English flag, then the Welsh flag, then a Northern Ireland flag which I invented, then a Scottish flag. I’m going into politics in nine years, and it sort of said, “We are totally different people, but we’re also exactly the same, and we are a United Kingdom.” We used to kill each other, and now there’s an Englishman running with a Scottish flag. It was beautiful. And we raised about $2.7 million. Hopefully some kid somewhere will think, “Oh, here’s a transvestite who runs marathons, does gigs in French, plays Shoreline and the Hollywood Bowl. Sure, I’ll do that.” It’s a good thing to put out.

Q: It sounds like you’re pretty certain that you’ll go into politics. Do you have an exact plan?

A: Well, it was 10 years last year. Now it’s a year later, so I’m saying nine years. I’m going to try to pull an Al Franken. As opposed to an Al Sharpton, I guess.

Q: Will you be running for Parliament?

A: Probably mayor of London or Parliament. I am very positive on the European Union, so maybe the European Parliament would also appeal. I’m being advised that you can get a bit lost out there. The British press pays no attention to what they do.

Q: Are there any projects you’re working on that people don’t know about yet?

A: I’m doing a “Treasure Island” drama which is coming out next year in America. “Pirates of the Caribbean” had a sort of swashbuckling tone. We did a real down-and-dirty version. And a film called “Lost Christmas: An Urban Fairytale,” where I play a curious, somewhat mystical figure who seems to find things that people have lost. And apart from that I’ve got gigs to do in German, Russian and Arabic.

Q: Have you done shows in those languages before?

A: No. I don’t speak any Russian or Arabic. I do feel like now is the time that people from Europe should be reaching out to the Arabic people. It’s sort of my duty, in a way. I’d love to go back to Aden, Yemen, where I was born, and do a gig in Arabic.

Q: You played a part in David Mamet’s play “Race” recently. What do you think about his recent shift to the political right wing?

A: Well, I wish David wouldn’t be shifting. We had big arguments about football, of all things. The World Cup was on at the same time as we were rehearsing for “Race,” and I said that soccer can save the world. He scoffed at that. What I feel that soccer can do is redistribute dignity around the world. Teams from smaller countries go and win. It’s amazing. They don’t have to go to war. They don’t have to come up with a GDP that blows everyone out of the water.

Q: Have you planned your wardrobe for the San Francisco show yet?

A: I have. I’m not in girly mode at the moment. I’m in boy mode. I argue with people when they say, “You have to wear these clothes.” No. I don’t have to do anything. I can wear what I want.

Eddie Izzard: “Stripped on the Shore.” 8 p.m. Sat. Shoreline Amphitheatre, Mountain View. $25.50-$131. www.livenation.com.

[from the Mercurynews.com]

When Eddie Izzard was at a career crossroads in his early 20s, the then-upstart British comedian found immediate inspiration from something less associated with one-liners than with graphical user interfaces: Apple Computer.

Apple inspired the college dropout to consider launching his own computer company, even though he lacked a clear understanding of the business. There was also the bit about his inability to raise capital.

“I couldn’t work out how to do it,” Izzard, now 49, says by phone as he sits in a cafe in Paris’ Place Pigalle section, where he is performing his “Stripped” stand-up show in French. “I chose the other thing.”

The “other thing” will be in full effect — appropriately enough, in Izzard’s beloved Silicon Valley — when he performs “Stripped” at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View on Saturday. One of his two U.S. appearances this summer, the Shoreline concert reflects the comedian’s affinity with the Bay Area, which stretches back to his West Coast debut in his “Dressed to Kill” show in San Francisco in 1998.

Since his 1991 breakout performance at a London benefit coproduced by future “House” star Hugh Laurie, Izzard has built a reputation as a fiercely original comedian. His ability to riff on everything from Steve McQueen to Gregorian chants to Greek mythology, to raft down assorted streams of consciousness, led to his being called the human search engine of comedy.

But the hilarity of Izzard’s observations is in the details. He re-imagines God, as voiced by James Mason, or Darth Vader grumbling in the cafeteria line of the Death Star.

All that normally would be enough to cement a comedian’s reputation, but Izzard has never made it easy for himself.

From his time as an aspiring sketch performer to his jump to stand-up to his move into serious acting, Izzard has almost stretched himself to absurd lengths rather than follow the obvious or easy path. When he took up running two years ago, he completed the equivalent of 43 marathons in 51 days. When he wanted to connect with an audience in Paris, he began performing his routine in French.

Though he immediately proved his marathon mettle, Izzard’s first foray into performing in French in the ’90s, though charmingly earnest, initially fizzled. He has since mastered the language and completed a self-financed 71-show run of “Stripped” — which, yes, included the bit about giraffes performing charades. His next goals as a performance polyglot: doing his shows in German and Russian. He ultimately would like to perform in Arabic in his birthplace of Aden, Yemen.

“I think I have a determination gene,” Izzard says. “It has something to with the death of my mother (when he was 6). And I quite consciously wanted to act since the age of 7. I’m putting together military tactics, determination, hopefully a good heart, and trying to set a positive image, so it’s all swirling into one thing.”

Izzard is regarded as one of the finest comedians of his generation, but he has yet to match that success as an actor. He’s landed plenty of plum jobs, such as the role of Sir Miles Axelrod in Pixar’s “Cars 2.” Izzard also has shown up in Hollywood hits (“Oceans Twelve,” “Oceans Thirteen”), starred in his own acclaimed TV series (“The Riches”), appeared in fanboy faves (the “Day of the Triffids” miniseries) and scored a Tony Award nomination (“A Day in the Death of Joe Egg”). Yet the breakout role has eluded him.

“The clock is ticking and I think I try too hard sometimes, which doesn’t always work,” he says. “My stand-up is based on having fun onstage, and when it works, it really works well.”

Izzard’s self-determined performance window closes in 2020 when he plans to enter politics. With the experience of campaigning for former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and fundraising for the Democratic Party in the U.S., Izzard is eyeing a run for the mayor of London, or perhaps a seat in the European or British parliaments.

“I’ve lived a life,” he says. “I’ve been talking about politics for 10 years, trying to establish myself as someone who’s paying attention and can maybe articulate on some things. But there are things I need to do for this career before I put it into deep hibernation. I want to get my drama at the right level. I feel like I’m getting close.”

What’s remarkable about his rise and ability to sustain his career is that it all could have ended abruptly in the early ’90s when he came out as a transvestite. Though perceived by some as a publicity stunt, if not career suicide, his fondness for performing in mandarin smocks and high heels is now nearly a nonissue.

“I think that it has become that,” he says. “In interviews, it is mentioned less, but the people who are fascinated by it go on and on and on. I say, ‘Hold on! I don’t want to be a professional transvestite. I just am a transvestite. It shouldn’t be the thing.’ ”

With a career that seems to keep building momentum, Izzard has just completed the filming of the British TV movie version of “Treasure Island,” in which he plays Long John Silver; has signed on to play a dwarf in “Snow White and the Huntsman”; and is now developing a political drama for FX network — all from a guy who at 24 considered himself a failure, unlike Orson Welles at that age, because he hadn’t yet directed his “Citizen Kane.”

“I’m kind of happy with the career,” he says. “It’s kind of bonkers, but it works for me.”

Eddie Izzard
When: 8 p.m. Saturday
Where: Shoreline
Amphitheatre,
Mountain View
Tickets: $20-$81,
www.ticketmaster.com

[from belfasttelegraph.co.uk]

It appears Nick’s casting takes the place of Eddie Izzard, who had previously been linked to one of the roles.

>> REST OF ARTICLE

A great retrospective of Eddie’s first stand up video. Thanks, Ken!

“I’ve mixed bollocks with bollocks, and it levels out to complete rubbish.” – Eddie Izzard

If you were ever interested in seeing how Eddie Izzard evolved his act into the refined bits of loosely scripted material that were his shows Definite Article, Glorious, and Dress To Kill, track down a copy of his first show ever put on home video, Live At The Ambassadors. Filmed during March of 1993 in London’s West End theater district, it’s kind of like watching a rough cut of a movie, or listening to a demo tape of a band just before they figure out what they really need to make it work.

>> REST OF ARTICLE

[from nbcmiami.com]

Eddie Izzard doesn’t just give voice to an international tycoon in “Cars 2,” he IS one. Or at least he’s getting there.
Izzard, who provides the voice of uber-wealthy motorized magnate Sir Miles Axelrood in the Pixar sequel, tells PopcornBiz that he’s an admirer of the colorful, visionary, larger-than-life style of globetrotting billionaires like Sir Richard Branson. “I do like Richard Branson’s style, which is also, I’d say, Ben and Jerry’s style, the Pixar style, the Google style, the Apple style: positive and fun things, design, thinking out of the box. I love all that.”

And, after a long, ongoing stint as one of the most popular standup comedy draws on the planet, Izzard’s getting a whiff of that rarefied air himself. “I think I’m living the European dream which is similar, but slightly different, than the American Dream,” he says. “It has more people on mopeds amid the sound of the Mediterranean coast saying ‘Ciao’ to each other. If I was just a pure businessman – which I could’ve done because I did accounting and financial management in college – I think it’d be quite similar to what [my career] is now, because I do sell my comedy around the world.”
Already one of the most quoted-back-to-himself comics (nary a day goes by without him receiving a “cake or death” reference), Izzard’s now getting his punchlines parroted back to him in unexpected accents. “I had a French guy doing it to me in English and he said to me, ‘You did this bit.’ I said, ‘Oh, yes, yes. That’s a fun bit, that bit,’ and he was doing the whole thing and he’d learned it all in English. I thought, ‘F**king hell!’”
Izzard calls his global brand expansion just prep work for achieving a singular goal: “It’s a warm up for the Hollywood Bowl on the 20th of July,” he says. “No comedian has done it as a solo act. Richard Pryor has played there, [Monty] Python did three nights as a group, but no soloist, we think – we’re checking on it.”

Izzard’s certainly doing things his way: despite a plethora of offers to translate his specific style of comedy into on-screen parts, he continues to save it for the stage and focus on roles that define him as a dramatic actor instead – his next role will see him tackling a “realistic” take on the Snow White fairy tale “Snow White and the Huntsman” (Izzard plays one of the seven dwarfs).

“Part of my reason of not doing comedy on television very much and not doing any comedy series or hardly any comedy films, really, is because I wanted to do dramatic roles,” he says. “I like doing dramas, and drama is what I wanted to do in the first place, when I was seven. So it’s this schizophrenic thing with surreal comedy, drama and I keep pushing them up. The comedy is going nice and the drama is getting better and better.”

[from the montrealgazette.com]

MONTREAL – “Can we do the interview in French?” Eddie Izzard asked on the phone from London recently. “How about a bit of both?” I answered. “It’s for Montreal’s English newspaper, so I’d like some English quotes as well.” Izzard obliged, but by the tone in his voice, I’d say somewhat reluctantly.

The brilliant Brit stand-up comedian and actor, best known for his transvestism, rambling monologues and Monty Python-esque style, is on a bit of a French kick these days.

Having just completed 71 gigs in Paris, he was looking forward to Monday’s shows in Montreal at the Gesù – the first at 7 p.m. in English, the second at 9:30 in French. (He performs again at the same venue Tuesday and Wednesday at 7 p.m.)

For a comedian who fills stadiums in Britain, a show in a 425-seat venue seems a step back. So why the challenge? “The world is a melting pot and I try to mix things up,” Izzard said.

The show he’s performing, Stripped, debuted in 2009, so fans have probably already caught the best bits on YouTube. Yet Izzard keeps it fresh by ad-libbing as much as possible – a talent no doubt diminished in French, which he speaks well but sometimes too quickly, and with an accent reminiscent of the Brit tourist holidaying in Normandy.

Izzard has been quoted as saying he’d like to eventually perform his stand-up in three languages he does not speak: German, Russian and Arabic. Considering the challenge he faces in French, a language he learned in high school and is still trying to master, that seems a tall order.

“The shows are exactly the same in French and English,” Izzard said. “For the first 10 in Paris, I was sticking closely to the script. But as I got on, I developed more ‘abilité,’ though some nights I was only half as good as my best gag. But by the end of the run, I was improvising five or six times during the show. The better my language skills, the more I can talk rubbish like I do in English.”

Izzard makes a huge effort to avoid slipping into English during his French performances – save for the occasional “absof—inglument” – which is a far cry from his early French performances back in the late ’90s in Paris, when laughter was sparse and he had a tendency to slide in sentences like “Tout le monde est très pissed off,” and “Je ne apologize pas.”

One assumes French audiences laugh at a different style of joke, with a more deadpan delivery or Jerry Lewis-like gestures. Not so, says Izzard. “If your French is good enough, you don’t have to be more physical.” As for the culture-crossing laughs, Izzard points to The Simpsons. “That show is shown all around the world in different languages and it appeals to a variety of different senses of humour.”

Izzard’s French show is different, though, in that it’s a half-hour shorter. “It’s all the same stuff English and French speakers can deal with,” said Izzard, who takes on universal topics like God, atheism, Wikipedia, dyslexia, dinosaurs and PC vs. Mac computers. Having seen many of the same clips in both languages, there’s no denying the English set is funnier, yet the French performances of today are far superior to the nervous sets of the ’90s.

The Izzard style of today is also far less flamboyant than in past shows like Dress to Kill and Sexie. Gone is the man with Shelley Winters hair, kohl-lined eyes, nail polish and chunky heels. He’s playing down what he refers to as his “girl mode,” in favour of jeans, leather jacket and well-groomed goatee. Izzard 2011 is a cool guest on Chelsea Lately, a Hollywood actor in such movies as Ocean’s Twelve and Thirteen, and an activist who has made no secret of his political aspirations and strong support of Britain’s Labour Party.

He’s even become something of an athlete, having run 43 marathons in 51 days last year to support Sport Relief, a charity in the U.K. One of his goals during his Montreal stay is to run to the top of Mount Royal.

Watching the evolution of this comic, whose inspiration comes from the likes of Python as well as Richard Pryor and Billy Connolly, you see several contrasting personalities: male/female, English/French and most recently comedian/politician. Yet for Izzard, all these facets of himself are one and the same.

“I don’t have different personalities,” he said. “Yes, the politics are more serious, and the dramatic acting is more serious. But in the end, it’s all just me trying to be creative.”

Eddie Izzard: Stripped is at the Gesù, 1200 Bleury St., Monday to Wednesday at 7 p.m. in English and Monday at 9:30 p.m. in French. For tickets and more information, visit hahaha.com or call 514-845-2322.