Well, finally, here were are. Almost two years after this gig should have originally happened, in a mostly filled Theatre Royal, we sit down the watch the show we should have seen on 27 March 2020. It was in fact one of the first to fall victim to the inital lockdown announcement of 23 March 2020, which I commented on at the time over at The Guardian.

The show is divided into two distinct parts, as you might be able to guess from the title. But tonight, the first part is in fact, Tornado, the reasons why it’s named that way become clear as the section continues.

“Hasn’t that Stewart Lee let himself go?”

The opening shots are about his own appearance, his health, and just about getting older generally; his rising blood pressure that constantly needs checking (always a great thing for a stand-up), and being described by The Times as “Britain’s Greatest Living Standup”, though he doesn’t like to talk about it, honest.

But it does serve as a bridge into talking about Netflix mis-listing his show, Comedy Vehicle, on the channel, for over two years¹, which gets him to compare his show to a few other stand-up listings on there. There’s a nice little little riff on Jimmy Carr, and how his show doesn’t contain any mention of sharks, but how it would be nice if they got the text to match what was actually in the show, and whether the comedian actually delivered what the synopsis said. There’s also the first mention of Ricky Gervais. I think it’s safe to say he’s not much a fan, given that he describes After Life as a nine and a half hour crying wank, and providing an altogether too convincing mime to go with it. But there’s more — much more — about Gervais later.

The biggest two sections in the rest of the first half concern Alan Bennett, and Dave Chappelle. He begins by telling us that someone drew his attention to Bennett’s discussion of him in the London Review of Books², which he looked up with a bit of excitement, given AB’s status, only to discover he’d been described as the JL Austin of stand up, and that “Erving Goffman would like him”, which generates the familiar kind of Stew mock outrage. But he ties this to watching other comics, including riffs aabout US stand-ups & audiences, which brings us into a routine about Chappelle playing a warm-up gig at the Leicester Square Theatre, following the last show in Stew’s longish warm-up run there. If you want to see Stewart Lee basically doing an impersonation of Barry White in an extended monologue about chicken juices³, then you are bang in luck here.

But the centrepiece of the first part is the brushing down and putting on of his Alan Bennett voice to read a viscera-spattered Bennett version of Sharknado, which is properly hilarious and finishes with a beautiful little stage set piece to end the first half.

Snowflake

After the interval Lee arrives back to ask how, as a man in middle age, he should cope with being an 70s & 80s-bred centre-left liberal in today’s comedy climate, and whether all the attacks on “Wokeness” aren’t just reheated versions of the cries of “it’s poliitcal correctness gone mad” that came in previous years.

The first focus of enquiry is Tony Parsons who, like Gervais, we can safely gather Stew is not hugely enamoured with. This partially stems from an emetic pearl-clutching GQ article Parsons wrote in 2019 which refrences Lee, whom he described as:

…the Guardian columnist, the BBC-approved comedian who can be guaranteed to dress to the left

One thing is for sure, Stewart Lee dresses very definitely to the right, and proves it to us tonight. He thinks his penis started in the middle, but like Parsons, has probably drifted to the right as they both got older. In some versions of the article, the words, “tip of a cesspit” figure too, and Stew takes delight in deconstructing that phrase for a while. While he’s doing this he ruminates about who the “metropolitan elite” that columinsts like Parsons talks about actually are, and he gets a big laugh from the audience when he starts to wonder if Newcastle is a bit pretentious and try-hard, and whether this audience here are just “the metropolitan elite but with sauce spilled all down your front.”

But the big moment of Snowflake comes when he starts to ask where the “woke” boundaries in comedy are, and who trangresses. So, he talks about the oft-heard opinion that “Ricky Gervais says the unsayable”. Except he doesn’t. He actually says things, making him someone who says the sayable by definition. What we then get is several minutes of what Gervais actually trying to say the unsayable might actually sound like. If you’re thinking cat coughing up furball, you’re also in the right place. It’s probably the highlight of the evening for me, and gets huge laughs, very deservedly.

And then we’re kind of into a wind-down. Given the great Barry Cryer’s death this week, like pretty much every comic Stew has a Baz anecdoate to share, and it’s a good one, told with real affection. That mood continues when he breaks persona for a moment to thank the audience for coming out after everything that’s gone on, and continues to. He’s generous in his praise for the backstage staff, and everyone who’s helped to make sure this evening can go ahead. It really is “just good to be out again.”

The last little bit of the night is a song, on an acoustic guitar, together with some effects (which you’ll be able to guess at if you scan the photos)

Of course, the ironic thing about the Bennett stuff in the first half, and the mock outrage at having the Austin and Goffman references thrown his way, only serve to demonstrate that Bennett is pretty much bang on. Lots of Goffman’s work is centred on the performance of self, and much of Lee’s act is shielded behind multiple layers of irony, and misdirection about who the “Stewart Lee” performing actually is. The Austin allusions make sense too. Quite a lot of Lee’s act is built up by copious use of repetition, call-back, and a relationship with the audience that is full of codified in-jokes, very knowing tongue-in-cheek sneers, and carefully confected beligerence, which those who know the format can peel back and enjoy at whichever levels they wish to. He jokes copiously about his reception in the left wing press, and undercuts it all with the sly back-of-the-hand admission that it’s all utterly absurd really. Of the shows I’ve seen him do (and this is the third), this feels like the least inflected, and the most open in many ways. He really is an experience to savour when he’s in full flow.

¹ it turns out they mistakenly provided the synopisis of Sharknado for his series, which was probably a bit of a disappointment for anyone wanting airborne apex sea predator larks.

² The entry in question is for 28 July

³which also crops up in the interval music. It’s not all just thrown together …