Day: July 1, 2008

After performing three sold-out shows at Radio City Music Hall (that’s 18,000 comedy fans), Eddie Izzard had a hotel rooftop party to celebrate with both his U.K. and U.S. representatives Sunday night and into Monday morning (including a birthday cake for his U.K. manager, Chiggy!). Izzard flew back to London afterward for a brief holiday before his Stripped tour resumes July 11 in Seattle and continues through August on the West Coast. Buy tickets here. Izzard gives an energetic two-hour performance without opener or intermission. He bounces up and down throughout. Is this a holdover from his workshopping, which took place on an actual bouncy floor? No. More likely it’s a matter of Izzard’s actual stage presence. The backdrop presents a massive cave with sketches in ancient languages and a window with two bars that looks out onto a changing view — first, blue sky, then a sun rises from left to right, then a giant eyeball, later stars burst from the eye, which changes colors several times, then a moon and stars. Izzard never addresses it or refers to the backdrop in any way. Afterward, he told me that he liked how the set could be interpreted in different ways, referring to it as "a prison of the mind" and wondering who the eyeball belongs to, anyhow? Is it you? Me? God? Of course, Izzard lets the audience...