From TIME OUT, January 29 - Feb 5 2003

Creature discomforts
Malcolm Hay talks to Stewart Lee about owls and pussycats

Stewart Lee's 'Pea Green Boat' is an extended version of a 20-minute riff he included in his stand-up show at the Edinburgh Fringe a couple of years ago. It's to do with those two unlikely boatfellows the owl and the pussycat. It's also to do with Edward Lear. A very rough outline of the show's storyline runs something like this: a man (it's Lee) goes to the British Library to research Lear's life. He comes across what appears to be the manuscript of a diary by the owl describing the famous voyage. Extracts from it are placed throughout the show along with sections from the real diary Edward Lear kept.

Lear himself appears. For the performances at BAC in Battersea over the next three weeks he'll be played by Simon Munnery or, when he's unavailable, by John Dowie, two highly distinctive and original comedians who've grown beards especially for the occasion. There's a cello player too.

It hardly needs saying that 'Pea Green Boat' is far from being a straight stand-up show. It marks a new departure for Lee, who had contemplated giving up performing after a 14-year career as a comedian. 'I'd got to the point with stand-up where I'd be doing two hours and I'd deliberately throw the show at different points - I'd sabotage myself, just for the fun of working it round again. I'd reached a stage where I was never nervous. Nor particularly happy when I'd finished the show. I always felt too safe.' Now, he says, it's like when he did open spots back in the late '80's. He's learning all the time.

Practical considerations came into play as well: 'After a year or two without doing any television I found that audiences were tailing off. And the kind of things that can raise your profile again - quiz shows and panel games - weren't being offered. They don't suit the way I do comedy anyway. Touring just wasn't sustainable financially. It's a situation several comedians find themselves in now.'

If 'Pea Green Boat' has re-invigorated him, so too has his lengthy involvement with the hugely impressive Richard Thomas work 'Jerry Springer - the Opera'. Back in 2001, Thomas invited Lee to collaborate with him on developing what was then a half-hour piece: 'Richard had written all the musical stuff for a series of club nights Simon Munnery and I put on called "Club Zarathustra". And for the BBC2 series I did with Richard Herring on Sunday mornings. As we were going into rehearsal with "Jerry Springer" at BAC, we realised that we needed someone to direct it. But we hadn't got any money. So Richard asked me!"

Since then, 'Jerry Springer - the Opera' has progressed to a highly successful production at last year's Edinburgh Fringe and then, from this April, a run at the National Theatre. Lee will direct that one too: 'I think a lot of people could have done it. All the comic timing and everything else you need is already there in the music.' He's approached it in much the same way as when he directed Julian Barratt and Noel Fielding in their 'Arctic Boosh' show: 'I try to tell the story and make people face the front.;

What's clear is that the opera's ground-breaking combination of high culture, showbiz and humour makes a perfect match with Lee's own skills and interests. Richard Herring, who first met Lee at Oxford University at a Christmas party in 1986 and started to write comedy with him soon after, is well placed to describe his talents: 'I've always admired the level of intelligence he could use in the harsh atmosphere of a comedy club. His material would be thoughtful but at the same time funny enough for him to be able to survive. He's very clever and erudite. But he'll still do stupid jokes. He'll take a serious issue then put it together with some very basic human function.'

Lee's making no special claims for 'Pea Green Boat': 'I can see with this that there's a new kind of show that I want to do. But I haven't quite worked out yet how to do it.' It falls, he says, between the two stools of stand-up and storytelling. What he won't say is that, even as a qualified success, it's a lot more interesting than most people's raging hits. So what comes next? "Jerry Springer" might transfer somewhere else after the National. At present, that's Lee's full-time job. But he has plans for a second novel. And - glory be! - he has at least two ideas already in mind for live shows in the future.