Stewart Lee
Nova (Cinema 1)
9:20pm, Wed 1 Mar 2000
Score: 8
Short Review: Lazy-in-a-good-way
After hearing of comparisons between Stewart Lee and the late, great Bill Hicks, I was anxious to check this guy out for myself. So, along with a ton of other people (who had either heard of Lee’s reputation, or were at his opening night because of the cheap tickets), I cosied into the non-air-conditioned (what? it was 40 degrees today!) Nova…
Lee’s style is fabulous. The best way to describe it is to say that he makes the audience work for, long for, virtually beg for the punchline. Maybe this is an acquired taste – I definitely heard some people post-show who didn’t agree with it – but I thought it was great. This was perhaps best demonstrated in his piece on the death of Princess Diana – the crux of the joke was introduced very early on, but you had to wait – almost labouring under the knowledge of what was to come – before Lee delivered the punchline that you knew was coming.
This may sound like a crap idea – trust me, it’s not. I’m going to cop out just by saying – go see Stewart Lee. It’s a different style of comedy, but he’s still bloody funny.