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Other / Miscellaneous PressSilver Stewbilee Review

By Irene Brown in Edinburgh Guide Posted on Thursday, August 19th, 2010

If you’ve ever played dominoes, you’ll know that while the first number has to match with the next, the last may not match with the first. I’m afraid this came to mind when I went to see Stewart Lee and Friends at his one-off Silver Stewbilee show at the Festival Theatre on 18th August.

There is an assumption that if someone makes you laugh, whoever makes them laugh will make you laugh too. Eh, no! Going by the comedy crowd laughter, I was in the minority but mostly the rest of the acts failed to reach my funny bone. There was neither programme nor flyer so the guests on the bill were a mystery. Some were a great surprise and a real pleasure to see, like the daft and novel Bridget Christie as A. Ant and amazingly Franz Ferdinand, both of whom gave terrific performances. Apart from them, I’ll move on.

This was Stewart Lee’s night. The evening was a celebration of his 20-odd years in stand up and to promote his book , How I escaped my Certain Fate: The Lives and Deaths of a Stand up Comedian. The title, How I escaped my Certain Fate, comes from a punk song by Mission of Burma and was played at the end of the gig by Franz Ferdinand. Nice touch!

I came across Lee by chance on his late-night TV show Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle and immediately liked his style. He is observant and topical. He uses repetition like a fairy tale in his own comic flights of fantasy, maybe to make sure the audience stays up to speed with his sharp, self-referential Borgesian style.

He used old and new material in the gig with his intelligent melding and observation of societal bigotry and liberalism. He covered the urban myths around country living, Gaelic as an ancient Scottish polari, Braveheart, crisps, charity and a certain topical news team named as the Seven Dwarves. Clever, original and funny.

Written by Irene Brown in Edinburgh Guide on 19th August 2010. Filed Under: Uncategorised
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