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Article by Andrew Berg taken from Detour Magazine. Izz You Izz Or Izz You Aint? British comedian Eddie Izzard is no longer on the street no more accosting passers by, no more waiting for a crowd to gather, no more escaing from handcuffs on a six foot uni-cycle. "That's a circusy kind of thing, a skill thing." he says, "and if you spend a lot of time on it you can get good. But I didn't want to get good at that. I wanted to get good at talking. Out in the street you can't play with words and ideas, you need big, physical, situation comedy. You've got to look like you're about to die. You've got to have a big car-crash, basically." A confessed dyslexic, the Yemen-born, English-bred Izzard has a knack for verbal contorcions. In the vein of Monty Python, his boyhood heroes, he spins out brilliant, surreal scenarios - invoking everything from Hannibal of Carthage to seedless oranges to the Grin Reaper to Mother Nature distributing methods of reproduction among the animals. "Dogs, you shall reproduce by means of doggy-style! Cats, you shall reproduce by means of ...doggy-style! Giraffs .... doggy style! Um. Salmon? Could I have a word with you in private please...?" At Performance Space 122 in the East Village, Izzard's New York debut was consistenly sold-out. Even with hold-over shows added, frowning crowds of hopefuls were turned away nightly. Inside, however, the air was charged with mirth. When Eddie appears in reflective trousers, emerald nailpolish and a T-shirt that reads "girls who do girls" he cuts a roguish figure - like a cross-dressing, slightly more impish Kenneth Branagh. And while being a transvestite British comedian might make him sound like a one trick pony, his sexuality is never a subject in his routine. "The good thing is that I'm known for comedy," he says. "I'm not known for being a transvestite. Some people say, 'Why don't you change clothes?' I say 'Well, what for?' Big costume changes? Why? You coming to watch me wear clothes or is it the comedy? People think it's a sort of drag kind of singing thing, and it isn't. It's just like women wear trousers now and back in the '20s it was an outrage. Marlene Dietrich, Katherine Hepburn, they pushed for it. They all wore trousers. There's pictures of Katherine Hepburn in trousers, Cary Grant sitting next to her with a sort of towel worn like a skirt around him. There was this big joke of 'I'm wearing a skirt! I'm a bloke. How outrageuos!' Nowadays that would just not be a photo-opportunity. You'd go 'What's he wearing a towel there for?' Women wear anything. Total clothing rights. And men should have total clothing rights, that's my idea. It's the 21st century, for Gods sake." Instead Izzard dresses his routine in absurdity: he posits chirping monkeys as the source of New York ambulance sirens and suggests that if he were Achilles, he'd incase his foot on a block of cement.- "I'm fascinated by history," he admits, " the human being repairing themselves over and over again, murdering each other in many unusual ways." Eddie has unusual ways of his own. "Someone said I was an elitist. And I'm not from that background 'cause I don't read anything." He leans in to whisper conspiratorially. "I just watch telly. I watch things like Discovery Channel and the History program. I get my stuff from that." Like Richard Pryor, whom he cites as a major comic role model, Eddie Izzard can inhabit any character. He can be a salmon or Julius Ceasar. So adept is he that the silver screen has already beckoned . He's currently appearing with Bob Hoskins and Patricia Arquette in The Sectret Agent. He's done television. He's done Sheakespear. But none of that is really his main cup of tea. "Comedy, " he declares, "is good. It's good for the soul. It gives off endorphines and people like that. Sometimes I fuck around just to make myself laugh." |