Eddie Izzard: Force Majeure

If he were a history teacher Eddie Izzard would provide the most enthralling lectures, pointing out past transgressions of human triumphs and failures, its stupidity being its own comedic device. At South Brisbane’s Convention Centre, Izzard highlighted the stupidity of everything from Charles I to Tony Abbott with a summarised, abridged version, reenacted. Hilarious.

The straight transvestite comedian toned down his appearance to a black, tailored suit and bright red nails. Immaculately dressed and sharp in focus, Izzard trolled through historical times through the use of a Steve, a Marc Antony chicken whose only military advice throughout every reenactment was to build a fortress around the issues, God with an effeminate voice, and Zeus with a Liam Neeson voice. He jabbed at Australia’s internet connection speed or “the spinny-wheel thing”; organised religion took a broad blow; and Izzard explained that his English audiences take comfortably to the idea of the English running hell. The upside being, “good suits and good music”.

This is the art of rubbishing human history and grinding moments down to such juvenile behaviour – we’re laughing, but if it was not Izzard doing the telling, we would leave bewildered at our so-called triumphs. And Izzard is not afraid to batten down his beliefs, stating that cleanliness is next to God’s non-existence-ness. His logic of consolidating prayers to all the gods by addressing only one Christian leader (so that not answering our prayers is made easier) just makes sense through his satirical wisdom.

Izzard strolled through his trove of bilingual skits, fluent in French and believable in German, the audience taking great delight in his theory of the Welsh and Indian accents sounding similar but at different paces. The Welsh accent, with added cocaine, would speed up to sound Indian, and respectively, Indian accent, when slowed down thanks to marijuana, would sound Welsh.

For a Monday night out, this two-hour set, apart from an interval, show was all seamless laughs, as he even delved into his own dichotic history, growing up wanting to join the SAS, playing football and stealing make-up from Boots. There are two things straight transvestites know well: action films and make-up ads. “Yippee ki-yay, motherfucker!... or maybe it’s Maybelline?”

Tonight was a pleasure being in the company of one of the greatest comedians of all-time, “the lost Python” John Cleese calls him. His encore finished by taking the piss out of Lord Of The Rings, using a Marc Antony chicken to vividly educate in the hilarious manner which makes Eddie Izzard world-renowned.

Brisbane Convention & Exhibition Centre, 2 Feb