Macky auditorium was buzzing with chatter Saturday night, as a ’60s pop playlist tinkered over the loudspeakers. The crowd, which was slightly older than a typical student audience, checked their clocks neurotically. Fifteen minutes late, the lights dimmed, the crowd went nuts and out stepped the night’s much-anticipated entertainer: famed British comedian Eddie Izzard.
Izzard is known for his rambling, stream-of-consciousness monologues and singularly-acted conversation scenes. His talent for accents and sound effects comes into play in his sometimes absurd imagined situations. For seasoned Izzard fans, his first Boulder show did not disappoint.
(Courtesy Eddie Izzard
Izzard started the show with some jokes tailored to the Boulder crowd, including one about the town’s name, which Izzard called “singularly unimaginative.” Within the first ten minutes, he had refuted the existence of God, rallied the audience to support Obama in the November election and mocked the Tea Party mercilessly, receiving cheers of agreement the whole time.
From there, the show took on a format that somewhat followed a random and rambling history of the Earth, starting with dinosaurs: “Tyrannosaurus Rex would be the perfect musician…huge body, tiny little arms, perfect for holding a ukulele.”
One particularly riotous scene was Izzard’s re-enactment of the first humans’ discovery of hunting weapons. Izzard adopted the nature and voice of a nervous caveman about to slaughter a mammoth with only his bare hands. Running across the stage like a mad man ready for the kill, Izzard tripped on a “rock” in the middle of the stage. He suddenly turned to the audience with the brightest “EUREKA!” look on his face, which he held for effect, and the audience roared. Without once breaking the scene, he strolled over to the “mammoth,” had a civil and engaging conversation with the beast, then bashed its imaginary head in.
Izzard unsurprisingly received a standing ovation at the end of his performance, which he finished off with a little talk about the first American on the moon (if Britain wanted to get to the moon, Izzard claimed, they would have bloody well done it first). The crowd seemed to drag their feet as they left and it was clear most were sad to see the night end so soon.
Izzard put on an incredible show. His tangents could perhaps get a little bit too far out and off— for example, he spent a solid amount of time discussing how disgusting it was to use sea sponges as hygiene products with no apparent connection to any of his other content. But for Izzard fans, that was just another bizarre but lovable nuance of the performer’s stage presence.
That night, Izzard took the audience on a crazy acid-trip of a joy ride and never looked back.
Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Sarah Elsea at Sarah.elsea@colorado.edu
