Comedy review: Stewart Lee: carpet remnant world
Stewart Lee: carpet remnant world
King’s Theatre, Glasgow
He bemoans his belated fame, first for the Jimmy Carr crowd and friends of fans it’s attracted, later for the online vitriol and Twitter surveillance culture it’s brought him. He maintains he has nothing to say, a middle-aged man whose time is taken up watching endless Scooby Doo cartoons with his young son and travelling to gigs, desperately hoping random retail outlet names will provoke material. This is a patchwork show, a weave of carpet remnants, with themes Lee has covered before in terms of the famous lookalikes he’s confused with, abuse directed at him and from him towards his fellow comics, and his ongoing meta-commentary and routine deconstruction as the show develops.
But it’s also a sublime validation of stand-up as art, pushing the limits of what it aspires to, playing with the expectations of a comedy literate crowd and ultimately drawing the disparate strands together. Trying on different stand-up styles for size – Thatcherism-bashing through Scooby satire; mocking sad, confessional comedy then drawing it into his narrative – he has the skill to toy with pace and mood, withholding easy laughs for greater pay-offs later. Sadly for him, he seems set to attract more fans yet.
JAY RICHARDSON