STEWART LEE |LIVE REVIEW
St David’s Hall, Cardiff
Tue 17 Sept
The semi-apologetic nature of much of Stewart Lee’s latest set, in which he ambles through three half-hour TV episodes’ worth of new material before finishing with a supposedly optional 30 minutes of fully unpasteurised fodder partly read from notes, is by no means unique among standup comedians. Comedy clubs and similar venues will often function as a safe haven for some famous gag behemoth to try out new stuff in sort-of secret, without knobheads who come along to shout the catchphrases. This show isn’t secret, it’s in a big and healthily-sold venue, and it’s called Much Astew About Nothing, which is a somewhat crap and dashed-off title but no worse than those unwieldy Rhod Gilbert type ones or DVDs with titles like Live And Laughing.
Stewart Lee can get away with selling this as a ‘proper’ show because the disjointed, self-analytical nature of the beast is intrinsic to what he does. If he just did jokes – most of his jokes are belters, and if we don’t laugh enough at one he deems a belter we get to hear about it – he’d be less popular with his live audience, although he’d also anger less internet commenters. A lot of tonight’s material is political: from Thatcher’s death to the modern Labour Party’s atrophying of their ideals to a long absurdist routine about UKIP’s immigration rhetoric to racist taxi drivers to a brilliant bit about campaigning to keep open a jazz club in Hackney. (Stew tries to get his black neighbour onside by noting that jazz is an historically black musical form; she replies, “yes, but not the sort that you like.”)
A comic who was schooled amidst the ‘alternative comedy’ boom of the 80s, the endlessly self-aware Lee knows that even among a four-figure crowd of people who likely have similar ethics to you, being politically earnest in your routine can spell death. Thus, he gets to have his cake and eat it, delivering the firebrand stuff but pulling away the rug before po-facedness threatens. Not that this stops people applauding things which aren’t even jokes, just opinions they agree with.
The second part of the show, following an initial half-hour and an interval, delves into unusually personal territory – the non-fantastical parts, at least. The phrase “impotent vasectomised functioning alcoholic 45-year-old father of two” is the crux of the issue: Lee has rendered himself unable to further spawn, and spends much of his day listlessly childcaring and handling the fallout of his bigoted drunk Irish wife. (The audience should be credited here for playing along with this, despite presumably knowing it’s an oblique reference to recent Foster’s award winner Bridget Christie. No-one shouts out a bit off the telly, either.)
A fair bit of the final stretch is partially reworked material from last year’s Carpet Remnant World set, including bits about Scooby Doo and the very final joke, concerning his grandfather’s biggest regret. Parts of it should be on a BBC2 near you early next year, and should maintain the sort of loyal-without-being-whoopingly-servile audience that makes a notionally half-arsed show in front of 1,400 people an actual good thing.
words NOEL GARDNER
