Stewart Lee’s Carpet Remnant World, February 4th, 2012, Leicester Square Theatre

What makes a comedy show funny? Is it it a succession of jokes? Is it a succession of shallow observations presented by a shouting purveyor of common denominators? Stewart Lee, it seems, does not think so. He knows that the majority of a London audience, secure in their own relative sophistication, will not spend most of their time watching Scooby Doo. He also knows that any political observers present will have more topical targets than that woman, Margaret Thatcher. Yet he can demonstrate to those gathered how the two icons are not only linked, but also that they yield one more example of how that particular government failed a nation. The explanation makes this comedy show very funny indeed.

Stewart Lee’s wit and wisdom goes beyond comedy. He demonstrates an understanding of the obvious distinction between the performer as a person and the performer as a construct. He also regularly pulls aside the wizard’s curtain to reveal his show as make believe. Some of the quotes that he reads out are revealed as fictions of his own devising, which of course leads us to question whether we can ever really trust anything he says. Should we therefore question his professed disdain for Michael McIntyre?
In a set that criticises the audience for how badly the show is going compared to previous performances, Stewart regularly gives us the prompts we need to remember that this is all carefully scripted, and inevitably repeated for all successive audiences. He sets a dead pan tone that he himself cannot maintain completely. His turns toward his backdrop failed to hide his own amusement, and in this instance I was completely willing to forgive him for laughing at his own material.

In a matinee performance, following a substantial run, one might have expected a performance to be possibly a little jaded, especially with another performance still to come that same day. However, Stewart seemed to delight in not only being able to deliver the clever conceit of the show’s climax, but also in the sense that the audience had by and large arrived at the same point in appreciation of not only all that had come before, but also how it contributed to the ending itself. And when he left the stage, unless it was all part of the intricate artifice, Stewart Lee seemed to allow himself one more very genuine smile. I hope he did enjoy the show as much as that seemed to indicate. I know we did. If you can catch him in London, or on tour, I am confident you will too.