The first time I ever saw Eddie Izzard was watching his special Dress to Kill. He's supernaturally funny in that. Tears streaming down your face, let up for a second because I can't breathe funny. I can watch that show (I bought it on DVD) and still laugh at it, even though I've seen it several times, even though I have the audio CD ripped and stored on my iPod (where it comes up regularly in the shuffle).
But it seems that Dress to Kill was his peak. I've watched some of his other concert DVDs. Glorious in particular is very, very good. When I saw him in person on his Sexie tour a few years back, though, I was... well, "disappointed" is not quite the right word. He still made me laugh. I still found him funnier than pretty much any other stand-up comedian. It just wasn't up to the impossibly high bar Eddie Izzard had set in my mind.
Last night's show in Boulder was another step down from there. His material this time out was much more heavily steeped in politics than any other set of his I've seen. And while he has always incorporated religion into his humor, it was much more about atheism than he's done before. It was so centered around the topic, in fact, that I couldn't help but compare it to Tim Minchin, who I saw last year and loved. And, unfortunately for Eddie Izzard, he doesn't quite stack up in that comparison.
Izzard did a full 90 minutes, and when he drifted more into his own weird lens on the world, he was great. He had a hilarious bit on horse dressage, a great prolonged bit about Ancient Greece (specifically the language), and funny little asides about dyslexia and cat behavior. I would still say his material is better than many other stand-up comedians today. It's just not as inspired as the unbelievable material he had a decade ago.
This was a quite reasonably priced ticket, as concerts go, so I would overall call it a very fun night out. But if I'm giving it a grade, it would probably be a B. Nothing shameful in that, except that I used to see Eddie Izzard as an A+.
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