I love Eddie Izzard. My friend Ruben introduced me to him, sending me a tape of his HBO comedy special. “Dressed to Kill”. If you don’t know who this guy is, you must check him out. Hilarious. So smart, so funny, so … indescribable. Truly.
If you’ve seen the special, then you will know of what I speak:
“Thank you for flying Church of England … cake or death?”
I saw him on Letterman a couple weeks ago, and he mentioned that he was opening in a play at the Roundabout, here in New York. Doing a play which he had done very successfully in London: A Day in the Death of Joe Egg
Well, Brantley just gave it a terrific review, which thrills me.
I must get my act together and go see this play.
Listen to how Brantley describes the acting. It sounds exhilarating:
When I first saw Mr. Izzard and Ms. Hamilton perform this scene, more than a year ago in London, I was convinced that they had improvised at least part of it, but when I checked the script, it was all according to the text. And when I recently saw them enact the same lines at the American Airlines Theater in New York, where “A Day in the Death of Joe Egg” opened last night, I again thought for one disorienting moment that they were inventing the words on the spot.
That’s the kind of freshness that comes only when a performer’s affinity with a role is like a blood tie. And that’s what Mr. Izzard and Ms. Hamilton, directed by Laurence Boswell, bring to their interpretations of Mr. Nichols’s play about the parents of a severely disabled child who use jokes to bandage wounds and to stop up the holes in a sinking marriage. They’re a truly, spontaneously funny couple — so funny that they break your heart.
A lump in my throat. Yes. So funny they break your heart. Yes. I know people like that.
And a beautiful analysis (man, when Brantley is on, he is ON…):
Mr. Izzard and Ms. Hamilton have, of course, already completely hijacked your attention, dragging you by charm and coercion into the alarmingly intimate interior of one couple’s relationship. As a woman who loves too much, and who expects love to transform its objects, Ms. Hamilton has a radiance that stops short, as it must, of saintliness. Part of that glow is purely sensual, though Sheila has little time for sex anymore, and you can sympathize with Bri’s frustrations with her.
Mr. Izzard is more slyly persuasive in his portrayal of an emotional cripple, an anguished mix of adult intellect and a child’s hunger for attention and affection. He uses the subliminal, masochistic anger common among stand-up comics to illuminate the essential self-disgust in Bri, his sad awareness of his moral limitations.
Ah.. It sounds wonderful. I can’t wait to see it.
