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I was lucky enough to watch an early performance of Eddie Izzard\u2019s \u201cDeath Star Canteen\u201d at Chicago\u2019s Royal George Theatre on March 26, 2000. My mom got the tickets for my 26th birthday, and by then, I\u2019d been performing stand-up for two years. Izzard\u2019s bit, \u201cDeath Star Canteen,\u201d shattered all of my preconceptions of what was possible. I\u2019d never seen a comic kill at three in the afternoon in front of almost 500 people. I\u2019d never seen a comic do more than 45 minutes, let alone two hours and an encore. I\u2019d never seen a comic work without a hand mic. I watched Izzard get laughs in ways I didn\u2019t know you could, and it was the funniest bit I\u2019d ever seen. Watch \u201cDeath Star Canteen\u201d now, as recorded that June at New York\u2019s Town Hall and released on DVD as Circle.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Comedy is an engine for turning fear into joy, and few characters in the popular imagination are as synonymous with fear as Darth Vader. Played by the six-foot-six David Prowse and voiced with eloquence and controlled rage by James Earl Jones, Vader is a force of inescapable menace throughout George Lucas\u2019s Star Wars trilogy. I remember crying so loud at 3 years old when the giant bionic killer choked his first victim that my dad had to walk me out of the theater. \u201cDeath Star Canteen\u201d is a six-minute deconstruction of the power of that character to frighten us, ending with the universal symbol of faceless terror reduced to an impotent laughingstock.<\/p>\n
Izzard leads into the topic with a riff on Lucas\u2019s out-of-sequence film numbering: \u201cthe fifth of the four Star Wars films.\u201d After impersonating a child incorrectly counting through the films \u2014\u00a0\u201cfour, five, six, one, two, three, ten\u201d \u2014\u00a0Izzard earns her first big applause break at 33 seconds after switching to the teacher\u2019s confused reaction. She holds this face for the laugh, her makeup ensuring the expression reads well enough to hit without words. Then she begins turning Lucas\u2019s menace into a mouse with one fact everyone knows: Vader is only part machine. His most iconic trait is his mechanically aided breathing, and if he breathes, he needs to eat. The movies never show him doing this, Izzard points out; acknowledging that Vader needs lunch would be a blow to his stature. What better location to bring him down to human level than an employee cafeteria?<\/p>\n
For this performance, Izzard wears high heels, tight leather pants, a shiny shirt, heavy rouge, eyeliner, and lipstick, just as she had in Chicago. Aside from expressing her identity, it\u2019s just about the most \u201cperformance enhancing\u201d outfit an entertainer could choose. The heels make Izzard taller, thus a more visible and dominant presence in the room. Her outfit\u2019s lustrous materials accentuate her movements, and the makeup amplifies her facial expressions like a visual loudspeaker. The benefits clothes and makeup like this provide, especially once you move past a club capacity, are why even a performer with as little interest in gender fluidity as Gene Simmons found a justification for putting them on. They just work.<\/p>\n
Izzard\u2019s decision to forgo the traditional handheld microphone for an ear-mounted one also pays dividends. She muffles the ear mic with her hand to get Vader\u2019s signature vocal distortion; to get the same sound with a hand mic, she\u2019d need to hold it in front of her face with both hands every time she talks. Darth Vader and the canteen employee look like Vader and a canteen employee \u2014 not Vader, inexplicably holding a microphone, talking to a cafeteria worker who holds one too. When I saw this live, it was the first time I saw a comic free to use their whole body for act-outs before. I never forgot it, and when given the option to ditch the hand mic on my Conan appearances 12 years later, I jumped at the chance.<\/p>\n
With the premise now established, Izzard begins stripping away everything that makes the character scary. \u201cI will have the penne all\u2019arrabbiata,\u201d she says as Vader, prompting a big laugh at 2:28. Beyond hearing Vader attempt Italian, witnessing a character we\u2019ve only seen giving orders and threats having to wait in a line and ask for food is already a demotion. \u201cDo you know who I am?\u201d he demands when the canteen employee tells him he\u2019ll need a tray. The employee fires the identical line straight back to Vader along with a perfect combination of vacant and perturbed on Izzard\u2019s face. The underling doesn\u2019t even recognize his leader \u2014 another notch down for old Anakin Skywalker\u2019s aura.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is not a game of \u2018Who the fuck are you?\u2019\u201d Vader snaps back. The audience starts to applaud, but Izzard pushes through. Flummoxed by the man\u2019s indifference, Vader goes on a lengthy explanation of how he could kill him \u201cwith a single thought\u201d if he wanted to, like a 12-year-old on the playground explaining why pushing him would be a big mistake. \u201cYou still need a tray,\u201d the worker tells him. Vader takes this to mean he\u2019d need a tray to kill him. He tells the employee he\u2019d hack away at his neck with the \u201cthin bit\u201d of his tray. Here, Vader is thrown off his game and grasping for words, for the first time stripped of the verbal mastery that\u2019s as key to the character as his power and cruelty.<\/p>\n
Then Izzard pops the scary balloon. The canteen worker, who is not scared in the least, interrupts Vader to correct him: \u201cNo. The food is hot. You need a tray to put the food on.\u201d Instead of attacking him with the tray as threatened, Vader crumbles, and in one sentence, he does three things we\u2019ve never seen him do: sees the error of his ways, apologizes, and awkwardly chuckles to ease the tension. The massive status shift earns Izzard a seven-second full-room applause break at 3:14. Another run of Vader trying to jog the worker\u2019s memory gets several laughs, leading to the worker mistaking Vader for Mr. Stevens, \u201chead of catering.\u201d A four-second applause break follows, and then Vader does get angry, but it\u2019s more pique than his traditional wrath. This guy has the food, so he can\u2019t kill him. \u201cI\u2019ll get a tray. Fuck it,\u201d he says, off to follow orders not from the emperor of the galaxy but from an employee of Mr. Stevens.<\/p>\n
The audience begins another ovation at 4:15, but instead of holding Vader\u2019s expression and letting it ride like a less-assured comic might, Izzard launches into an act-out of Vader trying to find a dry tray. Here the ear mic pays off again so Izzard can both do the Vader voice and sift through the trays convincingly. Her refusal to milk the applause breaks lets her characters respond to each other with the rhythm of a real conversation, rather than seeming to hold their responses until an audience they shouldn\u2019t know is there decides they\u2019re clear to talk again. For the sacrifice of a couple of ego-feeding seconds of applause, Izzard makes the piece feel more like a sketch than a series of jokes.<\/p>\n
Vader returns to the canteen line to discover he\u2019s been cut by someone who thinks he\u2019s \u201cGeoff\u201d Vader. Pushing into Abbott and Costello territory, they argue over his identity until he breaks down and threatens to kill everyone there. \u201cDeath by tray it shall be,\u201d says Vader to the completely unafraid \u201cOoh!\u201d from the guy who cut him off, and then the annoyed worker asks, \u201cDo you want peas with that?\u201d All that made Vader terrifying is gone, and we are left with a sputtering, frustrated cog accepting an unappetizing lunch from an inferior because he has no other choice. The half-man, half-machine is now a man stuck in the machine like all the rest of us. As Vader threatened to do to the canteen worker, Izzard has killed him \u2014 as an object of fear, anyway\u00a0\u2014 with a thought.<\/p>\n
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