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A Room With A StewReview: Stewart Lee At The Lowry, Salford Quays ★★★★★

Despite 25 years on the stand-up circuit, numerous sell-out tours and a BBC Two series, Stewart Lee is a comedian who has always managed to stay outside of the mainstream. In the main this is down to his astutely-crafted act, one that was in A-class form in front of a sold-out Lyric Theatre tonight.

By Dane Yates in SalfordOnline.com Posted on Monday, May 18th, 2015

Lee returned to The Lowry as an extra date in the midst a mammoth year long tour, something which would see most panel-show comedians gushing with gratitude for the requirement of an extra night.

Not Lee. He instead started out by berating the audience for not booking their tickets earlier at part of the “proper tour” – he then shares his fears that tonight’s audience not in fact his usual audience of “Guardian-reading intelligentsia” and instead people who will want to see some of that “proper comedy” – which he explains would involve him “remembering stuff in a regional accent”.

Tonight’s performance, as with the rest of the tour, is a chance to test new material for his new BBC series which will air at the end of the year.

He is completely unapologetic that due to this tonight’s encore might be “a bit crap”, he then races through and explains that the night will be in four main themes; the lack of Islamophobia in comedy, mainstream stand-up, nationalism and then the crap encore.

Anyone who has seen Lee’s TV show will have been familiar with many of the aspects of tonight’s show, stories where key lines are repeated over and over, each time drawing more laughs each time, clever yet passive attacks on elements of the right wing (be it in the form of broadsheet journalists, 80s comedians or, of course, UKIP) and existential musings on the hypocrisy of the world we live in.

Even the most avid of Stewart Lee fans may have been tripped over by the comedian’s apparent breakdown mid-set and rant at the audience for not laughing at the right punchline, but five minutes after said rant he masterfully hit the audience with the real punchline – you really do need to have your wits about your a Stewart Lee gig!

It is within Lee’s meticulously planned on-stage persona where the comedian’s real strength lies as it allows him to not only attack his audience, but also deal with some rather divisive subjects without even a scrap of offensiveness.

Written by Dane Yates in SalfordOnline.com on 18th May 2015. Filed Under: A Room With A Stew, Reviews, Series 4, Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle
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