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Vegetable StewVegetable Stew, Brighton Dome ★★★★

By Brian Logan in The Guardian Posted on Friday, October 22nd, 2010

“People say I don’t have any jokes,” says Stewart Lee in his new show – then sends up his supposed inability to crack a gag. But don’t be fooled. Lee’s entire act is a joke: if his lips are moving, he’s not being serious. What’s unique is his nimbleness in keeping a step ahead of our sense of what kind of joke he’s telling. It’s often funny, but at any given point, it’s deviously unclear what we’re laughing at. Adrian Chiles, or Lee’s juvenile dislike of Adrian Chiles? Russell Howard, or the corrupting pact between charity and celebrity? David Cameron, or our poor, benighted selves?

The latter sequence is an extreme example of Lee’s shtick – extreme, because his shaggy dog story about hobnobbing with Cameron at university intrigues, but hardly amuses. The routine starts by invoking the leftie agit-comedy of the 1980s. But this yarn, which subtly sends up Britain’s romance with the supposedly detoxified Tories – Lee even sings a Bullingdon Club guitar ballad – heralds a new brand of political standup, which meets 21st-century politics on its chosen battleground: character and emotion rather than reason and policy.

The earlier material is out-and-out funnier. There’s a dopey riff about Lee’s granddad, obsessed with crisps and assailed by Godzilla’s adversary Mothra. And a penetrating segment on charity, which digs into the cultural fallout when our most celebrated benefactors are also purveyors of snide gags on panel shows; whether that’s hilarious or tragic is up to you. Rather than marshal us to the laugh, Lee lets it ebb and flow – now within reach, now just without – on the tide of his insistent, repetitious delivery. This is satire as neuro-linguistic programming, like a relaxation tape with gremlins, worming Lee’s scorched-idealist worldview round the funny bone, and right into the subconscious.

Written by Brian Logan in The Guardian on 22nd October 2010. Filed Under: Reviews, Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle, Vegetable Stew
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