EDINBURGH EVENING NEWS - 22 August 2002

Stand-up sets out to sea in revamped rhyme
Stewart Lee turns story-teller in new show

Stewart Lee, Pea Green Boat, Traverse ****

Describe stand-up comedians. Easy isn't it? The clue is in the name, right? They're those people who stand up at a microphone and perform a comedy routine. People like Stewart Lee.

Would that it were that simple. Take this show, for example. Described as "ambient stand-up storytelling" - part comedy, part theatre and part biography. It may not quite know what it wants to be, but it's no worse off for its lack of a pigeonhole.

Comedy, it is said, differs from theatre in that it breaks down the invisible wall between the performer and the audience. There are few bettwe examples of this than Stewart Lee.

Even here in what is essentially a theatrical piece - he can't resist prefacing the show with a personal introduction to the audience in which he tells them how they can tell when he's acting, where he has placed his notes and which part of the show to look out for as "the boring bit".

Commissioned to write a treatment for a biopic on Edward Lear, Lee sets about conducting research - primarily centred around Lear's poem The Owl And The Pussycat.

Amongst his discoveries are a diary written by the owl, random scribblings by paranoid strangers and a tree in a cemetary infested with owls.

Somewhere along the line, this seems to be connected with a serious plumbing problem that stops Lee from either using the toilet or focusing on the project, much to the chagrin of the lead actor who has been lined up to play Lear. When that actor is Ray Winstone, it's time to start worrying.

There are some wonderful gags and ideas woven into this show, punctuated by Lee's talent to apply a comedian's logic to an illogical verse.

With Simon Munnery playing Ray Winstone as Edward Lear, and the atmospheric live cello backing, it's an eclectic evening of high entertainment, if not finally undone by the uncertainty of what it is trying to be.

Lacking the big pay-off punchline of a comedy routine or the dramatic closure of a theatrical piece, the disparate strands are never satisfactorily resolved. Still, this isn't comedy or theatre, but "ambient stand-up storytelling", remember? So who's the say that this isn't the intention?

Jason Hall.