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Much A-Stew About NothingStewart Lee: Much A-Stew About Nothing – Leicester Square Theatre

By Julian Hall in The Stage Posted on Friday, November 8th, 2013

It’s curious thing that Stewart Lee’s annual press outing has, in recent years, come when he starts carving his shows into three half hour segments to fit the remit of his television series – Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle.

Lee describes tonight as a “work-in-progress” despite this show running throughout the Edinburgh Fringe and touring the UK for the last two months. Still, however it is served, Lee’s ‘stew’ is a highly seasoned one as ever.

Although employing his familiar tropes of repetition, deconstruction and long-form subversion, the 45-year-old is much looser in style than he once was and also less surly, if no less scathing.

Targets as diverse as Ben Fogle and Ed Miliband are despatched with a mix of long and short form assaults. Meanwhile, UKIP deputy Paul Nuttall prompts a classic Lee rant, effectively a treatise on the benefits of immigration.

Touching familiar bases of lampooning his own fame, the whims of the comedy business, Lee goes beyond just pleasing his fans with more of the same. This is particularly the case with his final third that sees him muse on the ravages of age and family life, sufficient to drive a middle-aged man to become a ‘connoisseur’ of specialist beers with evermore unlikely names – Hogwarts Bukake anyone?

It’s impossible to believe that we could ever lose Lee’s incisiveness to an olde English novelty beer-induced stupor, and, indeed, as ever he doth protest too much. However, he’s packaged, there is a clarity to Lee that not even his own over-embroidering can hide.

Written by Julian Hall in The Stage on 8th November 2013. Filed Under: Much A Stew About Nothing, Reviews
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