Cake or Death

Eddie Izzard’s heady and manic standup routines ramble like some Ritalin-popping offspring of a transvestite and my favorite Baileys-and-coffee-swilling professor. “Someone’s killed 100,000 people,” said Izzard in Dressed to Kill. “We’re almost going, ‘Well done! You killed 100,000 people? You must get up very early in the morning. I can’t even get down to the gym! Your diary must look odd: ‘Get up in the morning, death, death, death, death, death, death, death — lunch — death, death, death — afternoon tea — death, death, death — quick shower.…’ So I suppose we’re glad that Pol Pot’s under house arrest…1.7 million people. At least we know where he is. Just don’t go in that fucking house, you know?”

These stream-of-consciousness tirades poke into everything from evil giraffes (“I will eat all the leaves!”) to martial arts, Pavlov’s cats, James Bond, stoned Olympics and twangy Americanized Robin Hood. In Izzard’s world, Sean Connery plays the role of Noah building a speedboat, Achilles should have put his foot in a “fuck-off” block of concrete, Hitler lost WWII because he never played Risk, the grim reaper should upgrade to a lawnmower, and the Spanish Inquisition would never have worked in the Church of England (“Tea and cake or death!”).

Tonight starting at 8 p.m. at the Paramount Theatre, 1621 Glenarm Place, Izzard’s new one-man show, Stripped, will take aim at a whole new crop of bizarre shit. Tickets are $39 to $59. For more information, call 303-623-0106 or go to www.paramountdenver.com.
Tue., July 29, 8 p.m.; Wed., July 30, 8 p.m., 2008