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A Room With A StewStewart Lee at Nottingham Playhouse: Review

By Nick Parkhouse in Nottingham Post Posted on Monday, January 25th, 2016

It would be fair to say that comedian Stewart Lee divides opinion.

Loved by many – including the residents of Nottingham where he was performing his third show in a matter of months – he’s also despised by critics and some fellow stand-ups alike, as he reminded us during the opening sequence of his new show A Room With A Stew.

In 2012 when Lee brought his Carpet Remnant World show to Nottingham, I noted that his constant disappointment with sections of the Playhouse crowd who weren’t his ‘fans’ was a theme throughout. Well, in four years, little has changed.

Lee still holds his audience, other stand-ups and, frankly, everyone in contempt, but it is the deconstruction and multi-layered nature of his work that remains so engaging.

He continues to pull no punches – James Corden’s admiration for Lee described as ‘like a dog listening to classical music‘ – but these moments are always used as a means to an end, rather than simply being vitriolic in themselves.

If you’d never seen Lee before turning up at one of his shows you could be forgiven for feeling somewhat bewildered.

A long sequence about Sunday Times columnist Rod Liddle being covered in food made no sense even to die-hard fans, while his laconic style always makes him look like a middle-aged man ranting at a bus stop.

And, unlike previous shows where the 47-year-old ties the loose threads of his story together in a cleverly developed finale, this show features shorter ‘sets’, partly because much of the comic’s time has been taken up writing the next series of his BAFTA-nominated – but unsuccessful, as he pointed out at length – TV series Comedy Vehicle.

“No-one is equipped to review me” he declared early on, and maybe he is right.

Watching Lee’s constant use of irony and self-awareness is akin to peeling back the layers of an onion – you’re never quite sure what you’re going to get next although it will often make you cry.

In a good way, of course.

Written by Nick Parkhouse in Nottingham Post on 25th January 2016. Filed Under: A Room With A Stew, Reviews, Series 4, Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle
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