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Stewart Lee: If You Prefer A Milder Comedian Please Ask For One
Show type: Edinburgh Fringe 2009
Starring Comic:
Stewart Lee

Stewart Lee: If You Prefer A Milder Comedian Please Ask For One


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Description

In this show, an account of something that happened to me in a coffee shop will be used as a convenient framing device for disparate material possibly concerning English Heritage, Top Gear, The Olympics, emigration, prawns, Bella Pasta, The National Trust, farmers, DH Lawrence, piglets, cathedrals, bees, Iggy Pop, cider adverts, riots etc etc.’

As usual, expect …

  1. Some punchy stuff near the top
  2. Inexplicable hostility towards relatively innocuous figures
  3. Silences
  4. Repetition
  5. Sudden and/or gradual shifts in tone, Velocity and volume
  6. Long routines experimenting with form rather than content
  7. he possibility of failure
  8. A quasi-serious bit at the end.
  9. And - new for 2009 - a song!

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Reviews

Stewart Lee: If You Prefer A Milder Comedian Please Ask For One, London run
Live Review
Leicester Square Theatre

Stewart Lee: If You Prefer A Milder Comedian Please Ask For One, London run

Stewart Lee is past it. Ensconced in comfortable middle-age, the essential anger of comedy has deserted him. It’s time for him, at 41, to retire gracefully.

Or so Frankie Boyle would have you believe.

The Mock The Week star’s comments that no stand-up over 40 is funny was the spark that ignited these 90 unforgiving minutes of perfectly-measured sarcasm, using deconstruction, repetition and moral superiority as the sharpened tools with which to slay the very idea.

Boyle’s proposition is conclusively refuted, while he becomes the object of Lee’s scorn, his supposedly controversial line about the Queen’s vagina being meticulously picked apart, revealed as ridiculous under the scrutiny. This is Lee’s usual MO, and it’s as effective today as it has ever been.

The show’s title, as well as serving as a warning for those who like their humour lass challenging to stay away, comes from the sign behind every Caffe Nero counter. It was there that Lee was embarrassed when his loyalty card was refused because of an irregularity in the accumulated stamps.

The incident is typical of the sort of minor irritant that middle-class comics of a certain age – the very people Boyle was presumably thinking about – often build routines around, getting laughs from their impotent fury. Lee proves he can easily fit into this category, though it soon becomes apparent his heart is not in it. He berates us for chuckling at the ‘wrong’ places and subtly highlights the artifice of the supposed rage behind the genre. Never mind the free coffee, he’s certainly having his Danish raisin swirl and eating it….

This show of extended set pieces then moves on to the life expected of a fortysomething parent, skewering the bucolic idea of moving to the country with its cultural malnourishment before moving on to an attack on the unedifying ‘politically incorrect’ ideology as espoused by Top Gear that culminates in a daring piece about Richard Hammond’s near-fatal crash. Here, Lee moves the audience between discomfort and laughter with deceptive ease.

Because they are so distinctive, it’s easy to focus on Lee’s techniques; the deadpan delivery, the constant reiteration of his themes, the aloof demeanour. But there’s also a playfulness that imitators often miss, while the intelligent but unpretentious writing builds skilfully to make punchlines out of the most unexpected places.

Only in his final routine, based on the artistic bankruptcy of advertising executives, is in danger of becoming a parody of his own methodology – but the payoffs are certainly well worth it, and you’ll never watch Mark Watson’s Magners cider ads in quite the same way again.

Comedy in-jokes are, of course, an integral part of the show’s fabric. As well as Boyle, Lee takes pot-shots at the easy target of Michael McIntyre and creates a whole new genus of stand-up: the ‘Russell comedian’. But such asides hit a wider audience, not just the comedy cognoscenti.

In what will come as a surprise to long-term fans – though it’s entirely in keeping with his compulsion to keep the audience out of their comfort zone – Lee ends with a sincere song. It’s a cover version of a Steve Earle track, not a schmaltzy Lee Evans-style number; but it’s enough to show that he still has the capacity to surprise – even at a positively geriatric 41
Date of live review: Wednesday 9th Dec, '09
Review by Steve Bennett
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Comments

Skip to page: 1 | 2

Andy - I have better things to do than watch this drivel. If he has got you to a place where the fact it is not funny is making you laugh because you are 'in' on 'the point' that doesn't detract from the fact that he is making money out of old rope. A severe case of the Emperor's New Clothes. And because I don't find him funny does not instantly make me a Jim Davidson admiring retard. The only comic in the UK whose fans are as smug as he is.

AMD, February 2012

Saw Stewart Lee early February and enjoyed Milder Comedian more than I did Stand Up Comedian. If you don't get the idea that Lee is playing with the what the audience expects of a comic, and how the comic can step back and observe how the audience is reacting, you won't get Lee. I like the way you are not sure how uncomfortable you will be made to feel. Our audience was criticised for not travelling to Central London to see the show, instead preferring to come to the more local Epsom! When he performed the song at the end, it wasn't embarrassing, because he had explained why he wanted to "reclaim" the song. Thoughtful, provoking and funny. Recommended.

Dee, February 2010

Lee is a brilliant comic, and as I am sure he said to every audience, he's not the kind of comic who is going to hold your hand through simple "setup-->punchline" jokes. There is a such a perfect ebb and flow to his shows, and I don't think any other comic quite matches it.

Pete, January 2010

It's quite funny how badly AMD has missed the point

Andy, December 2009

Saw the show in Galway, Ireland. Sharon Shannon played the Steve Earl song with him, nice surprise for everyone. And she seemed to love the irony. A fantastic stand up.

Kevin, December 2009

I saw this show about a week ago in Birmingham. I thought it was very good, as usual, but I didn't think that it was as good as, for example, Stand Up Comedian, and was certainly not a memorable. I think that there were some very faint hints of Stewart becoming predicatable here. So while it is by no means a bad show, I think I'd be disappointed if his next show wasn't much better than this.

Nathan Dean, December 2009

Was at the show the The Lowry on evening of 29/11/09 - extremely funny, he gave me an asthma attack....and the "my foot" joke was funny!

Chris G, November 2009

Saw Stewart Lee in Guildford last night and he was really bad. He had about 5 jokes which he made last 1 and a half hours. I've never been closer to walking out of a gig and I closed my eyes at one point I was so bored. One guy did walk out and Stewart Lee didn't take it very well. He seemed to have formed an opinion about the audience from the start, and when no-one laughed at his poor 'my foot' joke, assumed it was because no one had got it. We got all your jokes Stewart. They just didn't make us laugh. A shame. was looking forward to him. His support was funnier than he was. A real let down. Agree with the person above, I don't like repitition or pedantry.

AMD, November 2009

Really enjoyed the show in Worcester. Intelligent and very funny. A great performance, sometimes almost hypnotic in delivery. Highly recommended.

Brendan, November 2009

Excellent night, intelligent,funny and original - Don't understand why he is not selling out venues? One of the best live acts around

Mella Delargy, October 2009

Another sublime insight into the world Lee seems so tired of. Pant pissingly funny.

Andy H, October 2009

The usual comedy master class - pretty much as advertised on the show description. A long and sustained attack on Richard Hammond with a detour to slag off Frankie Boyle the highlights. Well worth a visit. 4.5 out of 5. If you don't like repetition or pedantry avoid

Andy Barr, August 2009

By doing something sincerely and well, Stewart Lee has broken the final taboo. I would see this show every night if I could.

Kirsten, August 2009

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Related News

Stewart Lee: If You Prefer A Milder Comedian Please Ask For One

DVD review by Steve Bennett

How far can you take a joke? That’s the premise of Stewart Lee’s latest DVD, in which he tests not only how far he can go with bad taste, but also how long he can drag out a single gag. And the answer to both is: much further than you think.

The keynote routine revolves around the Top Gear trio, taking their reactionary stance against ‘political correctness’ and turning it back on themselves to see if they can take a cruel joke as well as deliver one. Lee gets a laugh when he explains this single obsession will take around 40 minutes – but it turns out not far short. And despite the trademark repetitions, there’s very little fat on this daring routine.

The forewarning is typical of Lee’s deconstruction, throwing open the curtain to reveal the tricks and mechanics of stand-up. He expects his audience to have at least a casual grasp of the language of comedy – better yet if they’re fluent – and if he feels they are slipping behind, he patiently but patronisingly tells them off, like a teacher chiding a slow pupil.

Not that the Glasgow crowd are passive in all this, especially the stubborn punter Lee engages with in his early routine about his coffee-shop loyalty card. But while the awkward, terse encounter threatens to derail the routine, its inclusion captures the unpredictability of a live gig in a way most DVDs don’t.

It also feeds perfectly into Lee’s persona of a comedian frustrated with the expectations of his artform. Sparked by Frankie Boyle’s assertion that no one over 40 should do stand-up, Lee is trying to do an accessible Roadshow-style observational routine from the perspective of a grumpy middle-aged man, but somehow it all turns out much more bitter and bleak. The audacious – even epic – show ends with him shouting from the balconies in frustration at a cider ad. Here his repeated stressing of the same point could test your patience, but the affected psychosis is mesmerising.

Again, his clambering through the audience gives this DVD – the first to be released on the Comedy Central label – a distinctive feel; and while many stand-up titles will gather dust after their Christmastime viewing, the richness and depth of Lee’s magnum opus will have you coming back.

Stewart Lee: If You Prefer A Milder Comedian, Please Ask For One
Recorded at: Citizens Theatre, Glasgow
Running time: 105 mins
Extras: Interview with Kevin Eldon (a revealing and insightful 51mins); Nick Pynn short (2mins introducing Lee’s accompanist); Trailer (1min); Press and tour photos
Released by: Comedy Central, out now
Price: £19.99. Click here to buy from Amazon at £11.99

04/11/2010 Permanent link