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Stewart Lee vs The Man-WulfStewart Lee at Leicester Square Theatre review: laughs layered within laughs

The veteran comedian delivers gags aplenty with his trademark knowing style

By Bruce Dessau in The Standard Posted on Monday, June 23rd, 2025

We all like to get value for money from a show and Stewart Lee has come up with a brilliant buy-one-get two-free concept. Stewart Lee Vs The Man-Wulf is classic liberal Lee stand-up, then a send-up of no-holds-barred shock humour and finally an attempt to merge the two, playing a woke comic with a macho streak. Oh, and in one of these sections he dresses as a werewolf.

It is all delivered in Lee’s trademark knowing style. Even in the first third of the tryptich, where he is playing himself, it is a version of himself, a caricature of an imagined metropolitan elite entertainer irritated by the ignorance of his audience, annoyed when a so-called fan cannot name a favourite ancient burial site.

This first section is easily the most laugh-out-loud gag-packed part of the night, with Lee delivering conventional jokes about Keir Starmer, Coldplay and Elon Musk that he implies are beneath him. Jokes like these might make you giggle, he suggests, but they are just mousetraps, easy to set up with a little cube of verbal cheese.

It’s a smart way of having his cake and eating it, but Lee wants to push further, exploring the controversial output of multi-million dollar Netflix stars Dave Chappelle and Ricky Gervais. He is honest enough to concede that the power of this sensibility is complex, confessing to being cruel to a supermodel over a lunch and enjoying the frisson of the encounter.

For reasons which we won’t reveal Lee returns after the interval in the guise of the “Man-Wulf”. You’ve got to admire his commitment to his art, performing in a heavy furry costume (plus miniscule prosthetic penis) on the hottest day of the year. And with a heart condition too. As he remarked, this is real dangerous comedy.

While the Man-Wulf riffs are standard sexist edgelord fodder the biggest cackles here actually come from his physicality, as he attempts to sit on a stool and cross his legs while looking like a hybrid of the Honey Monster and Bigfoot. Lee is not known for his clowning but his attempt to grasp an out-of-reach microphone is the comic highlight of 2025.

After mocking the shockers Lee wonders if maybe the metropolitan elite could learn something from their approach and tries to deliver compassionate material with alpha male aggression. Is it possible to sing the praises of avocado on sourdough while sounding bellicose?

After Lee’s last back-to-basics show, this multi-textured three-pack adds welcome variety to his familiar outsider-yet-insider humour. At one point he quips that perhaps this is his mid-life crisis. It was either this or a motorbike. I’m glad he forsook the Harley Davidson. There are few comics who can be simultaneously superior to their audience and the butt of the joke as well as Lee.

Written by Bruce Dessau in The Standard on 23rd June 2025. Filed Under: 2025, Reviews, STEWART LEE VS THE MAN-WULF
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