Reveling in the rambling genius of Eddie Izzard

Eddie Izzard 1
British comedian Eddie Izzard’s Force Majeure comedy tour, which will encompass more than two dozen countires in more than two years, made three Bay Area stops: Santa Rosa, San Francisco and San Jose. Photos by Andy Hollingworth

Eddie Izzard was back in town this week with his Force Majeure tour. His San Francisco stop at the Golden Gate Theatre offered congratulations to audience members for being the smartest audiences in town (because they were there, naturally), and allowed fans the opportunity to offer depthless adoration to Izzard, the queenly king of the non-sequitur.

I reviewed Force Majeure for the San Francisco Chronicle.

You don’t go to an Izzard show for jokes you get to re-tell at work the next day. An Izzard ramble can begin with Oliver Cromwell, jog over to humanity going backward (“Take note, Tea Party,” Izzard said. “Here we are marching backward for Jesus.”), dive into the Emperor Constantine streamlining the pantheon of gods and end with Buddha, enjoying a delicious Indian meal and telling his followers that every time a gong sounds, a Buddhist angel gets its wings. We know this, he says, from the movie, “It’s a Wonderful Life This Time Around.”

Read the full review here.

I also interviewed Izzard prior to his arrival in the Bay Area. Here’s a taste.

If Izzard is sounding like an optimist, there’s a reason. In five years, he’s going to do his part in making the world a better place by going into politics. He remains resolute in his decision to run for mayor of London or become a member of Parliament in 2020.
“I’m inspired by Sen. Al Franken,” Izzard says, referring to the comedian turned Democratic senator from Minnesota. “He initially won by something like 312 votes and six years later by 200,000 votes. He’s a workhorse, not a show horse. He has been good for his state, good for his country.”
In the most recent British election, Izzard campaigned in 62 constituencies for the Labour Party, but the election did not go his way. “It’s not good to be on the wrong side of that,” he says. “But you have to learn from whatever happens, however people vote. I know I’m trying to do a good job on my end.”

Read the full interview here.
Eddie Izzard 2

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Eddie Izzard’s Force Majeure continues through June 20 at the Golden Gate Theatre, 1 Taylor St., San Francisco. Tickets are $61-$94, subject to change. Call 888-746-1799 or visit www.shnsf.com. Monday-Tuesday, June 22-23 at the California Theatre, 345 S. First St., San Jose. Tickets are $47.50-$69. Call 800-745-3000 or visit www.ticketmaster.com.

In praise of Lobsters who kill

This job I’ve given myself – to write about the people and companies creating the lively and wonderful Bay Area theater scene – is incredibly fun. I’ve been doing it for various publications for almost 20 years, and now that various publications have laid me off, I just do it myself because I want to and because I there are a whole lot of things going on around here that should be written about and shared.

A couple weeks ago, I had the pleasure of sitting in on the first run-through of Killing My Lobster’s latest sketch show, KML Hits Highway 101. That experience turned into the article you can find here.

Lobsters Andy

Last night I saw the finished product on opening night at Zeum. Because I was given entrée into the creation process, I think it would be unfair to turn around and review the show, so I’ve decided a standard review is inappropriate.

But I will tell you what I liked about the show (and there’s a whole lot to like about the show).

First of all, director Todd Brotze and his team of 12 writers have latched on to a good idea: the Schacter family, after their Danville home is foreclosed, hits the road in an RV (now their de facto home) to discover the glory of California. What follows are two acts, two hours and a mostly wonderful assortment of sketches, short films and recurring radio spots featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Clint Eastwood extolling the virtues of the Golden State (mostly Schwarzenegger expresses revulsion that Christian Bale is the new Terminator).

Even before the show started I had one of the best laughs I’ve had in a long time. A slide show displays various graphs of intersecting and non-intersecting circles of interest. For example, the circles of “comfort and dignity” and “airplane travel” found no intersection. My favorite one involved three circles: “Name dropped in rap songs,” “Hollywood landmarks” and “Equal parts crunchy and soft.” The intersecting area was revealed to be either “Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles” or “Jenna Jameson’s vagina.”

The hot on-stage quartet (tucked in against the redwoods in Patricia Gillespie’s appropriately cartoonish set), led by music director Mike Smith on guitar, launched into Phantom Planet’s “California” then immediately began riffing and rocking into the first sketch and the first musical number featuring the singing-dancing Schacters: dad Chet (Calum Grant), mom Shirley (Emily Morrison), teen daughter Ericka (Christine Bullen) and 10-year-old son Wiley (Andy Alabran).

Lobsters Leslie

Throw in a rogue California AAA agent (Leslie Waggoner) and a needy CHP officer (Nick A. Olivero) and you’ve got just enough tension and weirdness to fill two enjoyable hours.

Favorite sketches of the evening: Grant, Olivero, Morrison and Waggoner reciting a list of the abundant California festivals (including the dirtiest festivals you could possibly imagine); Grant and Waggoner tussling over a fender bender, he in SoCal lingo, she in NorCal lingo (turns out the language of love is In-n-Out; Alabran and Morrison as redwood trees in a long-term relationship; Olivero and Morrsion in a car ballet (with Grant and Alabran supplying “beautiful” background dancing); and a Southern California luncheon with wired-shut jaws, Botoxed eyes and lips and an artificially inflated buttocks.

Comedy, as the Lobsters tell us, means different things to different people, and that’s one of the great things about sketch comedy. You get wonderful performers putting on and taking offer personas at warp speed. Comic tone and approaches shifts from scene to scene, and somewhere along the way, you’re going to find your brand of funny.

That said, I have to say two members of this energetic cast (all of whom have great moments) made me laugh every single time they were on stage. Alabran (top photo) and Waggoner (lower photo) are just flat out hilarious. They’re tightly wound, slightly manic and pitch perfect. Their timing is impeccable, and they can make the smallest things turn from chuckle- to guffaw-inducing. They’re my kind of funny.

Waggoner has a great moment toward the end of the show, when as a tour guide, she tosses off, “The San Andreas Fault was a gift to America from France.” It’s a minor line but gets a huge laugh because she’s just funny. And Alabran’s funniest bit is also his most manic as he plays a murderer trying to flee down 101 but is mired in traffic. “Fucking 101!” he keeps saying.

KML Hits Highway 101 is a staycation worth taking, a quick trip to the land of funny.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Killing My Lobster’s KML Hits Highway 101 runs May 28-June 14 at Zeum Theater, Fourth and Howard streets, San Francisco. Tickets are $15-$20. “Recession night” pay-what-you-wish performances May 31 and June 4. Visit www.killingmylobster.com for information.

Something funny going on with sketchy Lobsters

KML Hits Road
The cast of Killing My Lobster’s KML Hits Highway 101 includes (from left) Christine Bullen, Callum Grant, Leslie Waggoner, Andy Alabran and Nick A. Olivero. Photo by Ashley Forrette.

In the green rehearsal room that also doubles as official headquarters for veteran San Francisco sketch comedy crew Killing My Lobster, actors and their director are warming up by being silly. They’re in a circle mimicking one another using repetitive expressions such as “Funyons,” “kisses from Jesus,” “monkey dance” and “it’ll all grow back.”

Truthfully, if the first run-through of their upcoming sketch show, KML Hits Highway 101, is as funny as their warm-up, they’ll be in good shape.

Though rough – this is the first time the cast of six has been off book – the run-through proves to be hilarious as director Todd Brotze (below right), making his KML directing debut after having performed with the troupe, just about laughs harder than anyone in the room.

Todd Brotze

Brotze dreamed up the idea for this show last fall: “I pictured this all-American family hitting the California highways,” he says. But when the KML writers got together earlier this year to begin the serious business of writing serious sketches, Brotze says there had been a shift in tone. “The harsh realities of the economy had set it. We had all been through the holidays, and any hopes about the economy recovering had been dashed.”

Though a sketch show, “Hits Highway 101” has what you might call an arc, a through-line or a plot. Though there are about 20 sketches in the show, there’s also a central core of characters, the Schacter family. Dad has been laid off, the family home has been foreclosed and it’s time for a “staycation.” Dad Chat, Mom Shirley and teens Erica and Wylie are hitting the road in their biodiesel “green machine” RV, though what they’ll return home to is anybody’s guess.

With this idea in mind, a team of a dozen writers met weekly and churned out about 70 sketches, which were then whittled down to about 20. Some of the sketches involve the Schacters and the characters they meet on the road (like the AAA lady and the CHP officer who desperately wants to be part of their family). Others relate more to the vacation playground known as California.

In some ways, with its recurring characters and its dramatic framework, this sketch show almost resembles a play. That’s not exactly a surprise if you’ve been following the Lobsters, founded more than 10 years ago by Brown grads Paul Charney, Jon Wolankse, Marc Vogl and Daniel Lee. Sketch comedy is the meat and potatoes of the organization, but there’s diversification in the form of filmmaking and full-length play making. Three years ago, the group’s first play, Peter Sinn Nachtrieb’s Hunter Gatherers, garnered phenomenal reviews and racked up local and nation prizes.

The second play, Matt Pelfrey’s Pure Shock Value, took a bow earlier this year.

Wolanske says that KML’s success on the play front has had an impact on the creation of the sketch shows.

“Having collaborated with two really talented comedic writers on those plays awakened us to the fact that being mindful of the intricacies of the overarching structure is just as essential as creating winning characters and developing unique concepts,” Wolanske says. “Working with Peter and Matt, we’d see how they pulled their pieces apart, scene by scene by scene and beat by beat in order to dial up certain elements and give new peaks and shadings. Being so intimately involved, I think we picked up some habits and now pay attention to how the minor scenes and individual moments contribute to the bigger story – which, with our sketch shows, is really the theme of whatever show it is we are creating.”

Brotze says that as in actor in KML Faces the Music, which had a recurring character, he saw how the audience responded each time the character made an appearance.

“That spoke to me,” he says. “It involves the audience and gets them involved in the entirety of the show. The basic nature of a sketch show is you jump from scene to scene and throw a lot of information out there. I like the idea of getting anchored and coming back to a story of some sort.”

The sketches in KML Hits Highway 101 (which opens Thursday, May 28 and runs through June 14 at the Zeum Theatre), involve everything from dating redwood trees to cosmetic surgery in LA to a wine merchant named Lord Humongous.

KML postcard

Getting from the 70 sketches originally created for the show down to the 20 that are actually on stage can be a painful process for the writers. But Andy Alabran, whom Brotze describes as the “grand poobah of sketches” (he’s actually KML’s creative director for sketch shows), says this is when it’s important to understand the bigger picture.

“You have to remember that this is about a lot more than one sketch,” Alabran says. “You have to remember the goal: to get as many laughs as possible. Everyone is there to support that goal, and when something doesn’t work, you get a whole lot of feedback. You try this, get rid of that, cut a page, rearrange – whatever. You get to see exactly what the joke is, what makes it work, how to get to it and how to build it up.”

Alabran, who also performs in KML Hits Highway 101 as budding adolescent Wylie, performs in a sketch about two redwood trees that have been dating for 536 years and 17 days. The sketch has changed dramatically since its initial conception.

“With any sketch, you want the story to be in three acts: you introduce the characters and situation, you get involved in the situation, then you wrap it up in about five minutes,” director Brotze explains. “With that one, we got into it a little too quickly. We gave the joke away right at the top, and there was not build-up of the relationship. The writer took another stab at it and worked up the tension between the trees, Lucas and Fiona.”

Comedy is always a risk, of course. But the great thing about a sketch show is that if you don’t like something, wait five minutes and you’ll get something new and different.

“Sketch comedy, like any art form, is a huge leap of faith,” says Alabran. “You put it out there and hope for the best. Because this is comedy, you want as many laughs as you can get. When we put these things together, we share our opinions about what’s funny and what isn’t, but there’s no real right answer. We value each other’s opinions. We’re all open and collaborative and excited to do what we do. We put it out there, and if someone laughs at our stuff, that’s great. We have fun creating it together, and because we enjoy creating it, I think that translates to the stage. It’s like fine art…but with fart jokes.”

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Killing My Lobster’s KML Hits Highway 101 runs May 28-June 14 at Zeum Theater, Fourth and Howard streets, San Francisco. Tickets are $15-$20. “Recession night” pay-what-you-wish performances May 31 and June 4. Visit www.killingmylobster.com for information.

 

Review: `Billy Connolly Live!’

Opened April 2, 2008 at the Post Street Theatre, San Francisco

Connolly unbound: Comedy sets Scot free
3 1/2 stars — Big, bulky laughs

Billy Connolly must tell you something. He simply must.

The Scottish comedian, best known for replacing Howard Hesseman on the sitcom “Head of the Class” or starring (quite admirably) opposite Judi Dench in Mrs. Brown, is a stand-up legend in Britain and Europe, where he sells out arenas.

In the more intimate confines of the Post Street Theatre, he’s adorable (it’s the accent) but with edge (it’s the material and his love of a certain four-letter word beginning with f and ending with uck). The 65-year-old’s exuberance and energy is unflagging for two nonstop hours, and once your ears adjust to the Scottish brogue, he’ll keep your energy zooming right along with him.

Connolly reminds me a little of Robin Williams in that his comedy seems to come from his very core, and that core is a little manic, hence the constant running up to the edge of the stage with, “Oh, I must tell you this!” There doesn’t seem to be a lot of writing or shaping to this material — it feels genuinely part of Connolly himself and not part of some well-thought-out joke machine. There’s a lot of improv going on, some of it quite physical. All of it very funny. He’s also got a little Eddie Izzard vibe in that he riffs on curious things, both personal and cultural, and then weaves them into the evening.

On opening night, he began with thoughts on the movie Rob Roy and what “shite” it is because Rob, though portrayed as a hero on film, was a “thief and an asshole.” Then he explained that he loves cursing, especially through the use of the aforementioned f-word. “I may sally into the area of c—,” he added, noting that in his native land, that c-word, so dreaded here, is no big deal.

For the next couple hours, Connolly rambled most marvelously about things as varied as: the balaklava his Auntie Agnes knitted him; a one-eyed man’s puce Porsche; sneezing with your eyes open; evolving air quotes into other air punctuation (my favorite bit of the night); terrorism in Glasgow (“Imagine bringing terror to Glasgow! We love it!”); his father’s many strokes; shagging a lady dwarf (that was one of the evening’s more interesting side roads); and pranks — or “frights” as he called hem — that he and his fellow band members inflicted on members of society.

We learned a few things about Connolly, like he worked in the shipyards, played drums and is devoted to the elimination of “beige-ism” from the world — a noble pursuit to be sure. But the most important thing we learned about Billy Connolly is that he’s a true original, a comedy voice we haven’t heard and a style that knocks us about a bit and gives us a grand time. Judging from the number of times he cracked himself up, Connolly seems to be having a grand time as well.

I leave you with two of my favorite Connolly-isms: “You couldn’t hit a cow on the ass with a banjo,” and “If you’re on fire, and someone kicks you in the balls, it’s not your day.”

Billy Connollly Live! continues through April 12 at the Post Street Theatre, 450 Post St., San Francisco. Tickets are $50-$55. Call 415-771-6900 or visit www.ticketmaster.com or www.unionsquaretheatres.com for information.