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Eddie Izzard shares his offbeat opinions on Champagne,
fresh fruit, hairnets, Pavlov's cats, James Bond's gadgets
and other bizarre subjects, recorded live on stage at the
Shaftesbury Theatre in London...
In
this reissue of his 1996 VHS release, Eddie Izzard's eccentric
anthropomorphising scales new heights of strangeness, as he
attributes personalities to pears during a tirade about fresh
fruit. Pears are vindictive creatures, he tells us, for they
go from being hard and unripe to mush when we're not looking.
Advertising
is another favourite subject that he resumes following his
Unrepeatable
tour, as he discusses the defunct brand Mr Dog, which was
renamed Cesar following a "strokey-beard session" on the part
of the company executives. Dogs are also touched upon during
the comedian's comments about the scientist Pavlov, though
he quickly switches to wondering how far Pavlov would have
got had he tried to condition the behaviour of cats (answer:
not very far at all really).
Fantasy
fans should particularly relish the segment concerning James
Bond's gadgets, a routine that involves the debut of Izzard's
Sean Connery impersonation - complete with uncharacteristic
Muttley-style snigger.
The
material shows its age a bit when the comedian talks about
British television only offering four channels to choose from,
and even more so when he ponders the nature of the "pause"
button on VCRs. His description of the "La Cucaracha" pause
clearly predates the widespread uptake of DVD players with
their pristine pause facilities - which is ironic given the
medium in which this product has now been released!
The
production values have gone up a notch since Unrepeatable.
As Eddie himself claimed at the time, his previous show had
him just walking on stage and saying "Hello". This time he
makes an impressive entrance emerging from between the pages
of a giant book.
At
just under 110 minutes duration, the main feature runs half
an hour longer than Unrepeatable, but unfortunately
much of this time is wasted on pauses, "erm"s and "ye-e-e-e-e-es"s
as Izzard visibly and repeatedly struggles to remember the
next bit of his act.
To
compensate, though, the extra features (which were unavailable
for review) include the 50-minute BBC documentary, Je Suis
a Stand-up, which follows the comedian on a globetrotting
tour that takes in Paris, Reykjavik, Stockholm, Cologne and
off-Broadway in the USA.
Despite
its lulls, Definite Article is definitely still worth
picking up.
Richard
McGinlay
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