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Content Provider (The Show)Stewart Lee at the Nottingham Playhouse – Review

By Sean Hewitt in Nottingham Post Posted on Wednesday, March 15th, 2017

Content Provider, the latest show by coruscating stand-up Stewart Lee, seems at first to be simply more of the same thrillingly intelligent, intricately constructed comedy he’s been selling for more than 20 years.

But it’s more than that, building towards a final destination few comics could imagine, ending in a dazzling visual flourish. Yet again, Lee has provided a masterclass which ranks among the greatest comedy shows I’ve seen.

Oh, we got about 20 opening minutes of blistering stuff about Brexit (prefaced by Lee’s offhand “I’ve not really written anything about Brexit, but…”), and routines about his family, Deacon Blue, the under-40s he so despises, singer FKA Twigs, the differences between jazz and folk, ways of pushing up the online value of his own second-hand comedy DVDs, Doctor Who, the BBC’s cancellation of Lee’s “multiple award-winning, critically acclaimed…and cheap” TV series, the subsequent commissioning of a remake of Are You Being Served? and, of course, a sustained diatribe on Donald Trump (prefaced by “I’ve not really written anything about Donald Trump, but…”) to open the second half, deliberately mirroring the beginning of the show.

His arrogant stage persona and some of the older hilarious invective endure, especially his withering attacks on other comedians and his prolonged explosions of contempt for his own audience (“What can I do? I can’t really set an exam before I let you in”). Yet he always keeps the high-flown themes secondary to the laughs and sheer brainpower.

Even so, always allowing for the fact that you can never take anything he says at face value, there seemed to be some newly melancholic method to his madness this time.

He said more than once that his real theme was – ahem! – the atomisation of our individuality in a digital capitalist society. And, in the end, it was. He said he was tired of “the character Stewart Lee I’ve created”. He was only joking – I think.

Even the manic, demented routine about his grandparents’ allegedly fetishistic love life turned into a lament of the death of traditional courtship in the face of internet dating which reduced everyone to mere customers.

After jokingly saying all night that the show was inspired by Caspar David Friedrich’s 1818 painting Wanderer Above The Sea Of Fog, Lee was in the midst of another sermon on our superficial, narcissistic age when he brilliantly and unexpectedly turned the image on the audience itself.

And an evening which had had a full house in the sweltering Playhouse laughing hysterically – especially in the turbocharged second half – ended in gasps.

Written by Sean Hewitt in Nottingham Post on 15th March 2017. Filed Under: Content Provider (Show), Reviews
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