Eddie Izzard – Wembley Arena

Friday 4th December 2009

It’s almost 10 years since Eddie Izzard’s ground-breaking Circus Tour was recorded live in New York. With him back on tour, it was a great opportunity to see the latest performance live at Wembley Arena.

Over the years Eddie Izzard has performed quality atheist material in high heels to a largely religious audience and also tackled a routine in French to an English-speaking audience. It requires a kind of genius with big balls to pull off either of those feats.

I was really excited about The Stripped Tour, knowing that Eddie Izzard would probably perform routines that other comedians simply wouldn’t touch. The only downside was that our floor seats were so far away, it was impossible to see him on stage. That is until you noticed the amazing portrait styled screens giving you the impression you were following a giant Eddie Izzard.

Eddie Izzard’s biggest problem is that he has too much to say and just doesn’t have the time to say it in. A superb routine on the difficulty of Latin and Caeser’s reaction to being told about Hannibal and his elephants was superb. As he’s performed routines in other languages previously, he decided it was time to tackle the language of dinosaurs. It’s great that he can now perform routines without the need for language at all.

There was so much great material throughout. I loved the amount of times he just happily accepted Apple’s terms and conditions, to the fact computer software download times did not follow any of the laws of physics.

Aside from the astonishing 43 marathons in 51 days, Eddie Izzard is a comedy genius and it was a joy to see him live in action!