It’s possibly unreasonable teasing Eddie – now Suzy, but either is fine – Izzard about laziness. After all she, then he, once ran 43 marathons in 51 days then, six years later, ran 27 marathons in 27 days, then 31 marathons in 31 days, the last with a stand-up gig
each day. All for charity.
And right now she’s in the middle of two different world tours, which will be performed in English, French, German and Spanish. One is for a solo Hamlet, in which she performs some 23 roles from Shakespeare’s longest play on a bare stage.
But the other – and this is where the laziness thought comes in – is a stand-up comedy show called The Remix. Basically it’s a greatest hits from the half dozen or so past routines since the 1990s that have made Izzard one of the greatest British stand-up comics ever.
But it’s soon clear that even gently ribbing Izzard that The Remix is her taking it easy, when she looms large on the Zoom screen from London, sporting a blonde ponytail of equestrian proportions and lipstick freshly applied, isn’t going to work.
From experience, this writer knows that any Izzard interview will include tangents mostly about Izzard thoroughly explaining things. A discussion on Hamlet becomes a small Ted Talk about the history of pre-Shakespeare British theatre since the Romans. Sometimes, you can wonder if Izzard is auditioning to be a slightly wonky Wikipedia AI voice reader who’s in a bit of a rush to get to the interesting bit.
So yes, Izzard has some thorough explanations behind The Remix and the 35 years of previous shows she’s pulling from.
“Because, well, you know bands, if they don’t come and do some of the golden classics then people are really pissed off. Now, I don’t know how much you know about the history of performance comedy …” and she’s off, explaining that once upon a time doing weekly television variations on the same old thing was a UK comedy tradition. And that when she and other left-field comics of her generation came along and started improvising, that changed everything.
“I can confidently say I was at the vanguard, because I started improvising and putting stuff in … but then it changed into having to constantly have different shows.”
Initially, the comedian’s Los Angeles agent had suggested reviving one of the old shows. Maybe 2000’s Dressed to Kill, which, when recorded for an HBO special, won Izzard an Emmy ahead of Cher, Billy Crystal and Chris Rock.
Even with all the noise going on, it’s a better place. I can exist, I go out. No one batted an eyelid today as I walked around.
Eddie Izzard
Izzard opted for a “remix”, where past routines could be brought back then mucked about with and improvised upon. Plus the gender fluid comedian has remixed herself a few times over those decades. But fans who remember Izzard in long trousers should get plenty of nostalgia, with a twist.
“So I take classics like Death Star Canteen and if you know it you’ll be going, ‘Yeah, yeah, that doesn’t go there normally. Who’s that? What’s Daphne du Maurier doing in there?’”
So, as well as revisiting Darth, or as Izzard fans know him “Jeff” Vader, and his exasperation at his work cafe, the show will also contain traces of Izzard’s biblical reinterpretations, beekeeping, the death of Caesar, jazz chickens and more.
But in an age when all of the originals are available to people on YouTube, does that make it harder?
“It doesn’t matter, because that’s what the remix gives me … it’s like when Madonna did that thing on Like a Virgin, which she did like a German torch song.”
In 2014, Izzard attended seven nights of the final 10-night farewell season performed by Monty Python, the troupe to which she’s often been named a comedic heir apparent. She remembers going backstage afterwards and reassuring the likes of John Cleese and Michael Palin that it was actually great when, during classic sketches, they fluffed lines and ad-libbed. “I was trying to get a message through to them that you can remix.”
But the Python last bow wasn’t an influence. “I mean, I love Python. They can do no wrong for me, but that didn’t affect quite what this is.”
Most of Izzard’s stage time in the past year has been devoted to Hamlet in an adaptation written by her brother Mark, who earlier wrote his sibling a solo version – with a relatively modest 19 characters – of Great Expectations. “He’s the real academic of the family.”
When it comes to Izzard doing the Shakespeare play, you have to ask, what’s better, her Hamlet or her Ophelia?
Take a bow: Eddie Izzard with director Selina Cadell for the opening night of Great Expectations. Photo / Getty Images
“My Ophelia is getting really good,” Izzard says with a smile, before picking up the ball and running with it for some distance.
“Everyone wants their Hamlet to be good, but I’m coming to the table with such a weird training it’s got to be different in some way.
“Having been through years of street performing and years of stand-up, I have talked to the audience for so many hours – that’s going to bring something weird to the soliloquy. But I’m just not bothered up there. I’m really not bothered … I live it up there. I try and find how I can push it, make it better, pull it, twist it. I just feel so at ease playing Hamlet, which is a bit odd.”
Considering the material?
“Considering all the pressure of the people having played it, and they played it with this voice,” she says in mock Shakespearean tones. “But I’m not, I’m coming to it with this. My training is probably very similar to the training of Shakespeare’s actors. And Shakespeare didn’t know he was Shakespeare. The actors didn’t know he was Shakespeare. So this thing should be immediate, it should be visceral and it should not be this old staid thing that the elitists want, so we pushed right against that and we went for our version.”
Edited highlights from the following Izzard guest lecture on Hamlet, which the interview soon turns into, also include Izzard’s dissection of why Shakespeare allowed Norwegian prince Fortinbras and his army to march through Denmark on the way to Poland; the influence of ancient Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus in why Shakespeare had Hamlet visit England; whether the first actors to play it might have contributed to the subsequent versions of the play; and its various flaws.
“Everything about drama is show, not tell, and such a lot of Hamlet is tell, not show. ‘Horatio, let me tell you what happened on that boat.’”
Her final Hamlet performance for the year will be in her childhood hometown of Bexhill-on-Sea. The town on the Sussex coast was also the location for her 2020 movie Three Minutes to Midnight, the film she wrote and starred in set at a real local boarding school for the daughters of high-ranking Nazis on the eve of World War II. The movie didn’t do very well. “It didn’t end quite how I wanted it. They were probably a bit more Nazi than we made them, these young women.”
After her Remix shows in NZ, she promises she’ll return with Hamlet at some stage. Izzard has been here quite a few times before.
The late Georgina Beyer showed her around Parliament once – “she was great” – encouraging Izzard’s eventual ambition of becoming a UK Labour Party MP. She tried to become a candidate in 2022 and 2023 and wasn’t selected either time. She remains philosophical.
I live it up there. I try and find how I can push it, make it better, pull it, twist it. I just feel so at ease playing Hamlet.
Eddie Izzard
“If you study Lincoln, he pushed and pushed and pushed and it took some time to take off. I’ll just keep pushing until I get in, so it’s all good. But I’m not quite there yet. Some transphobic people really want to stop a trans person getting into Parliament, but it’ll happen. It doesn’t have to be me. There were once no gay MPs, no lesbian MPs, no women MPs – you’ve just got to go through that place and then move on. But I’m relentless, so that’s not a problem.”
Last January marked 40 years since Izzard came out as trans, a celebration marked by tea and scones. In 2020, she declared she would be permanently in “girl mode” from now on and took on the name Suzy in 2023, but she’s relaxed about being called Eddie – and having it on the posters.
“So I’m very proud of that, and now it’s got into this kind of a bit of a shouty thing. But when I came out it was completely silent – tumbleweeds.”
Now, with her political ambitions, does she find herself in a culture wars crossfire? “They’re not culture wars, they’re culture debates, culture disagreements … people can get hot under the collar about it but it’s not a war. It’s a time that we have to go through, as with marriage equality.
“Did I think it would get to this place? No, I couldn’t imagine where it would get to. I thought it would get to a better place. Even with all the noise going on it’s a better place. I can exist, I go out. No one batted an eyelid today as I walked around.
“Some people coming out as trans or LGBTQI+, it’s still not particularly easy but it’s definitely better than it was.”
That anniversary and the career retrospective have both given Izzard, 63, some pause for thought. “I am of a more senior age than I was once and when I was younger I was always thinking I could get things going really early, and that didn’t happen for me. So things came to me later in the fine wine style of career. I’m okay with that.”
Tour dates: Isaac Theatre Royal, Christchurch November 21; Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington November 24; The Civic, Auckland, November 26.
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