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Much A-Stew About Nothing‘Much A-Stew About Nothing’ at The Crucible: A Review

By Kate MacCarthy in Zarwil.com Posted on Monday, February 10th, 2014

Sheffield based fans of the self styled ‘forty-five-year-old functioning alcoholic, vasectomised father of two’ had been looking forward to the last weekend in January ever since tickets for his show went on sale in autumn of last year. Yes, you guessed correctly, Stewart Lee was back in town this weekend with his new stand up show Much A-Stew About Nothing.

Sheffield is the only place on the tour outside of London where Lee has chosen
to play more than one night [NOTE: This is incorrect. This tour included 2 nighters in Sheffield, Brighton, Newcastle, Bristol & 3 nights in Salford] and it was also the place he filmed his Carpet Remnant World DVD last year, saying he liked audiences here.

Apparently we like him quite a lot too, as he sold out almost two thousand seats over two nights at The Crucible. Although he is often branded an ‘alternative’ comedian, Lee’s audience is apparently not so niche in Sheffield.

The show began with Lee bounding on stage wearing his usual uniform of black suit and grey converses and explaining that the night would be structured around three half hour segments, each one dedicated to a certain topic. These were three of the six half hour segments he had recorded for the third series of his BAFTA Award-winning BBC2  programme, Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle. On the night I attended, one was about racism, one about immigration and the other about pornography and the death of imagination in our young people. Cheery stuff, he said in his characteristically deadpan manner, and then he had us in the palm of his hand for the next two hours.

Highlights of the show included his monologue about Paul Nuttall of ‘the UKIPs’ which built and built to the point of absurdity and a description of the recent Paxman and Russell Brand interview as ‘like watching a monkey throwing its own excrement at a foghorn’. In his own inimitable style, Lee analysed and deconstructed his own material as he went along. This was most brilliantly demonstrated during a ‘phone call’, a concept familiar to his fans, where he lamented the lack of a big laugh to end the first half and of course prompted one in the process.

If you liked Stewart Lee before, this tour is more of the same and will have you hooting with laughter. It was a thrill to watch someone who is, put simply, so bloody clever. Unlike anything you’ll ever see from ‘those Mock the Week b*****ds’, as he so delicately puts it, this is an intelligent and unique style of comedy that asks the audience to anticipate the joke. He takes us into surreal imaginary scenarios whilst simultaneously commenting upon some of the most talked about issues of our times, but the main point is that he’s just plain hilarious.

I can’t wait to watch it all again when it’s on our screens this spring.

Written by Kate MacCarthy in Zarwil.com on 10th February 2014. Filed Under: Much A Stew About Nothing, Reviews, Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle
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