Austin Live Theatre: Eddy Izzard, Stripped -- the U.S. Tour

June 6-8, Paramount Theatre

Until very recently, I had no idea who Eddy Izzard was.

- - You’ve got to be kidding. Really? Eddy Izzard? Where have you been?

Well – in reverse chronological order, I’ve been living in the Dominican Republic, Switzerland, Gabon, Senegal, Cyprus, Ecuador, Algeria, etc., over the past three decades, with brief assignments to Washington DC. And we have never been plugged in to U.S. television anywhere, any time. So I lack some U.S. cultural references.

To tell the truth, I had, at least, heard of Eddy Izzard. A year ago, while my daughter was finishing her undergraduate degree at the University of Chicago, the Episcopal chaplain sent her and others a link to an Izzard commentary on ritual in the Church of England. Pretty funny stuff, taking the mickey out of the clergy. And by the way, when the newly appointed Episcopal bishop in Chicago recently visited the school’s Brent House outreach to students, he did another Eddy Izzard routine for them, verbatim. Except maybe without the “***ng” parts.

Back in April we saw a full page ad in the New York Times for Izzard’s 30-city tour of the United States, which included three nights in Austin. Only four other cities got three nights of Izzard: Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago and San Francisco. And he'll wind it up with four nights in Los Angeles. ("I'm bicoastal. London and Los Angeles.")

I followed my daughter’s enthusiasm and I wrangled some “limited obstructed view” tickets in the first balcony, purchased directly from the box office. We got Netflix to send us the video of his 1995 “Definite Article” tour. After we watched that, we wondered what the hell we were getting ourselves into.

It didn’t help when the Austin Chronicle began its announcement of the man’s three-day engagement at the Paramount Theatre with, “Eddie Izzard. Eddie f***ng Izzard. Right: Make your reservations now.”

We had the tickets already. So we went, to his last show, on Sunday.

The house was full. Within the already rococo Paramount theatre stood a set that resembled something out of an Indiana Jones movie: stark side curtains looking like rock walls and a matching rear temple wall with a high window in it. Behind the excited buzz of the crowd we could hear the recorded warm-up music: a grandiose aria from Mozart’s Figaro, some sweeping Strauss waltz schmaltz, ballet music that had to come from Tchaikovsky, and then, oh, God, Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance.

Then there he was, and the crowd went wild. He didn’t even have to say anything. He strode around the stage in well worn jeans and a frowzy cutaway coat with red lining, taking his first bows.

He charmed us all with his rapid fire, unpredictable patter, abrupt pauses during which we could almost see the cogs in his brain jamming and then letting loose, and all of it in that articulate, beautifully articulated, deliberately slangy and at times f****ng vulgar Brit speak. He did an early bit on how cross dressing as a young man had brought him the unforgettable experiences of being mocked, threatened and walloped -- grin, grimace, laughter. He riffed on Wikipedia as the source of all knowledge and on accepting computer updates (“then after all that you boot it back up and it’s no ***ing different!”).

“Welcome to Austin! Uh, your own city – I had no idea this was the capital, until I walked out and saw that big building out there.” He talked about the vast distances and differences in America. In one early throwaway he reminded us that European history was different. “We went through the two big wars, and we had millions of bodies piled up.” He did a disquisition on killing through the ages, miming victims and murderers, playing assassins for laughs because they were high on hashish and incapable of thinking straight. He mocked ancient beliefs and then replied to himself by dispatching the mocker with a sword thrust (“Oh, yeah, Future Boy?”).

He took on knowledge itself, and time, language, religion and the Bible, the extinction of the dinosaurs and the nature of sin. Meanwhile, that window high in the rear temple wall lit slowly, cycling through slow color changes first with a sun, then with a giant eye in a partially seen face that cycled through all the colors of the races of man and wept stars. In the second hour of Izzard’s no-intermission wild flight, the window shaded gradually toward night and a stark moon loomed through it. Eddy Izzard ignored that enigmatic window completely, striding about far downstage, close to the audience, driven by his own inner images.

And seized by sudden characters. Warriors. Flying fish. Dinosaurs (big, dumb and mute, trying to understand the world about them). Moses delivering the commandments (twice, the first in hilarious mime to fellow dinosaurs). Roman soldiers trying to conjugate and understand enough Latin to communicate the fact that Hannibal was coming over the Alps. Barnyard animals (noisy) and wild animals (silent). Flying fish. God himself, watching TV and drinking beer, too absorbed to pay attention to disasters of humankind. Egyptian soldiers pursuing fleeing Israelites through a plague of frogs (“Frogs? That’s not a plague. That’s just – lots of frogs! God must have run out of plagues. Oh, uh, yeah, send 'em frogs.”). Einstein. Jesus at the Second Coming, massively surprised to be unrecognized because his name in Aramaic is in fact “Eashoá.” A long bit on characters picking up flaming torches in spooky movies, with sound effects and an invitation to crawl down into a dark tunnel after treasure (“Hah! No way!”). The swelling Appendix, telephoning the Creator of Intelligent Design, for guidance.

And offering apparently spontaneous commentaries. “Oh, yes, this is tightly scripted, tightly scripted. Hah!” On history: “Either the world started about 7,000 years ago, according to some, or hundreds of millions of years ago. So what did the dinosaurs think about that?” On Darwin (“and his book: Monkey, Monkey, Monkey, Monkey, YOU!”). On the Bible – “Great stories, heroes, but why didn’t God tell us on the first page in Genesis, ‘by the way, it’s round’?” On the ethics of major religions: “Never mind the Ten Commandments. When you delve down into it all, you really need only one: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Oh, and one more: what goes around, comes around. But then that’s really the same thing. Only in reverse.”

Izzard didn’t comment much on politics, other than a harmless throwaway on George Bush, and he said not a word about Iraq. But at the encore, Eddy told us he hopes that Americans will elect Barack Obama and maybe Democrats will choose Hilary as vice president. “A great idea. Not just 8 years, go for 16!” He asked us to engage and work for our candidates for November.

After Izzard took his bows again and finally disappeared from the stage, behind the excited and satisfied buzz of the crowd, the exit music was high-energy rock ‘n’ roll with lots of drums.

Wow. Now I understand why the Episcopalians like this man. He has the energy and unpredictability of Robin Williams, but he is obsessing over so much more. This smart, cheery, vulgar not-politically-correct Brit is talking about the Whole Thing. We are laughing, beguiled by his changes and imagination, while Eddy Izzard is riffing on death and murder and faith and eternity. He is looking into the dark depths of history and pre-history, and he is lighting them up with sharp flashes of wit, amazement and contradiction. And don’t we wish that we had his acuity?