A yellow weather warning sign displayed on the motorway tonight as I headed into Glasgow. There should have been one outside the theatre too as Eddie Izzard treated us to heavy giggles and floods of laughter. 'Wunderbar' is his final tour before he heads off on the campaign trail to become an MP and it is a belter.
At the start, he explained why he wants to Make Humanity Great Again while decrying our current leaders whose insular thinking he abhors. Only, unlike me, he made it funny and interesting.
His attire was enhanced by a wonderbra (because he's dyslexic), worn under his black blazer, giving his upper-half a bigger bulge than usual. The ensemble continued with black shorts, black tights and knee-high leather boots (although he swapped into plum-coloured high heels for the second half). Bright pink lipstick completed his look as a blonde/blond 1930's chanteuse, deliberately chosen as that's the period of history we seem to be returning to (unless we change it).
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From when he left the stage at the end. I didn't take any photos during the performance. |
He delivered a tiny fraction of his material in German, a little in French, a lot in Pingu and made regular use of expressive sound effects. Regardless of which language he used, though, it was all incredibly funny. His characteristic, playful dialogues riffed on history from the Big Bang to last Thursday through a prism of modern cultural motifs, James Bond, Marvel and JRR Tolkein all getting mentions.
He brought us a fat ancient king (William the Conquerer, I think) who died when he exploded like Mr Creosote, killed not with a thick slice of chocolate mint or medium-size chocolate mint but a (French-accented) wafer-thin chocolate mint. While detailing how Henry the Eighth's wives died, one was beheaded by a helicopter (true story). There were also lots of historical figures called Kenny.
He's not a fan of religion, preferring logic and reason to blind belief, and acted out why it took God 130 billion years to create man - after the Big Bang, he'd also invented crack.
Tigers featured heavily tonight (jazz chickens were only trotted out once) and so we were blessed to hear his version of a Tiger hymn because, of course, all of God's creatures must worship their Creator.
This is a surface scratch of the zaniness. I can't recall it all. It's a wonder he can remember it all too.
He left as he appeared, in a blaze of light.
Final word: "Wunderbar".
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