"Monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey - YOU!"

CAL and I have seen all of Eddie Izzard's comedy shows on DVD, but this was our first time seeing him perform live. I don't recall him ever coming to Detroit before, so I figured this was a rare chance for us to see him. The Detroit Opera House was packed, most likely sold out.

He hit the stage around 8:15 and did his thing until 10:00 - running a little over the 90 minute show the usher told us to expect. He wasn't dressed in drag unfortunately, just jeans and a black tuxedo coat with tails. He's always been a high energy performer, but it seemed to me that he was particularly manic last night, dancing and sometimes talking so fast that his words became a little mushy and difficult to understand. The stage was decorated like a stone prison cell. There was a window with bars high up, showing a sun, a floating eyeball, and then the moon. It was a very nice touch, that window. You can see pictures here.

The jokes were all new, but the subject matter was prime Eddie Izzard material: God, religion, ancient history, languages, evolution and creationism. He has a real knack for taking esoteric material and making it side-splittingly funny; one of the best bits of the show was about ancient Latin, and how ridiculous it could have been for the Romans to carry on a conversation in that language. I'm not even going to try to reproduce it here, because I would murder the joke. Suffice it to say, I never realized that Latin could be that hysterical.

He went all the way back to the dawn of civilization when the world was nothing more than "volcanos and dragonflies," with God sitting up in the clouds pushing buttons. This was followed by dinosaurs, the Stone Age, Wikipedia and how to make jam, giraffes dealing with tigers by coughing, vicious Spartan sheep, and more. The title of this post refers to his take on Charles Darwin and The Origin of the Species.

The first time I saw his "Dress to Kill" performance I laughed so hard that it hurt - literally. If you haven't seen it before then I give it my most whole-hearted recommendation.

For more on the "Stripped" tour, including other blog reviews and Youtube videos, click here.

...

Here's a Flickr photo pool of shots taken earlier this month in Washington D.C. Outstanding quality.