Saturday, August 11, 2007
The Boyfriend, our friend Selena, and I spent a couple of hours with comedian/actor extraordinaire, Eddie Izzard … and several hundred other people. Eddie was in Seattle performing his “Work in Progress” show at Bagley Wright Theatre in Seattle Repertory Theatre at Seattle Center.
Eddie’s standup routines are hilariously original, with historical and observational humor, philosophical bits, current events, and more. Tonight’s gig covered America’s Revolutionary War, religion, speedboats, and spiders, among other topics; bees and jam were also mentioned. Eddie did some improv, too, when he was dive-bombed by a rude, non-ticketholding housefly (theatrefly?). Final score: Eddie, 1; fly, death.
Unlike many other comedians, Eddie does not do unoriginal, tired, stereotypical crap about relationships. I have 5 DVDs and 6 CDs* of Eddie’s standups routines, and I crack up every time I watch or listen to him. (*Circle, Definite Article, Dress to Kill, Unrepeatable, and Glorious on both DVD and CD, plus Sexie on CD.)
Bees make honey. Wait a minute, bees make honey? Do earwigs make chutney? Do spiders make gravy?
I took a bunch of photos with my cell phone camera. They all turned out badly. The Boyfriend also took pictures; his turned out a little better.
About 5 minutes before show time:
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You can feel the audience quivering with anticipation, can’t you? When Eddie came on stage, the crowd roared with approval and enthusiasm.
Here’s my “best” picture of Eddie (and that’s not saying much), highly color-saturated:
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You can tell it’s him, right?
And here’s one The Boyfriend (TB) took:
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Probably more identifiably Eddie than my photo is.
If only we had known that Seattle Rep doesn’t have security checkpoints and doesn’t search purses, we would have brought our digital cameras and the quality of our pictures would be much better. Now we know for next time. And there probably will be a next time–in Seattle, at least, if not at the Rep. One of TB’s co-workers saw Eddie at the Moore Theatre a few years ago.
And … a couple(?) of months ago, Selena and I both sent e-mail to Eddie (via the “contact us” page on his Web site), begging him to come to Seattle. That seems to have worked very well, so I followed up with a thank you and an invitation to return:
Dear Eddie,
Thank you for a thoroughly enjoyable show in Seattle on Saturday, August 11th! On behalf of the entire audience … nay, on behalf of the entire city … we apologize for the fly. We think his name was Jeff and he was upset that bees and spiders usually get more attention in your shows, and he dive-bombed you out of spite. We’re glad the little b*****d died.
Again — thank you, thank you, thank you, and please come back to Seattle soon.
Love,
[Steve]