Eddie Izzard came to town with three shows in three languages. Brit Colin May and multi-lingual German Gabriele Dangel went along to see what it was all about...

Eddie Izzard is performing in the Northwall, and the first part of his show, Force Majeure 333, is in German.

I am German, and am very much touched by this. Izzard's intention though is not to please me, he has a bigger aim. The comedian and want-to-be-politician is on a promotional tour to support the Stronger in Europe campaign. In Oxford this involves an afternoon event Stand up for Europe at Oxford University, and three one-hour shows in German, French, and English.

Quite a tour de force, or in German "ein wahnsinns-kraftakt", and very much in line with the marathon-man's character.

But how would he do it, and would the three performances have references to the differences of the nations and the weird stereotypes they have of one another?

Izzard in his stage persona with high heel boots, eye make up, lipstick makes it clear, this is not what Force Majeure is about. He points his Union-jack painted fingernails towards different members of the audience. "Gleich! Gleich! Gleich!", he exclaims. We are all the same, and we are all getting the same show – never mind the languages.

It helps that his humour is very often physical, as when mockingly doing dressage or impersonating a mole digging away and striking gold, or just plain silly as when he has Karl 1 (Charles 1) and his entourage wearing dogs as wigs.

Do Eddie's language skills affect his performance? Well in French, a language with which he feels more at ease, he is readier to depart from his script. He is best though in English, when he is free to improvise.

Yet his efforts to connect to the audience in different languages reaffirm his idea “that we are all the same”. For Izzard, shared humour is a perfect way to make contact and break down borders. Having seen the same performance in three different languages he is right: Germans, French and English laughed and applauded at the same jokes. Nous sommes tous pareils. We are all the same.

Gabriele Dangel

Oxford Mail:

....and the English perspective:

The topics of Eddie Izzard’s absurdist humour remained the same as in the German and French shows, starting with the human race creating human sacrifice as the hapless Steve is decapitated for the third time in a single night just because of avarice over some spoons.

A non-existent or incompetent God continues to struggle with using the internet ("I forgot the password for heaven. Jesus what’s the password?") and King Charles I still has a dog on his head (a King Charles spaniel of course).

Izzard’s lampooning of dressage is again the biggest belly laugh, a tour de force of physical comedy with his body, elbows and knees at angles as he prances around the stage finishing with playing out a new TV game show, dressage burglary against the clock.

This time though the door attendant says "Thank you" rather than "Danke schön" or "Merci", and Izzard ambling on stage confides that while the French show had been less high-stress than the German one, this was like "hanging out of a window and having a chat."

In the French and German shows with Izzard dropping his voice almost to a whisper, singing and humming quietly and with his open body language, it seemed like we were eavesdropping on someone talking to himself.

Now, in English, with him being able to be more spontaneous, it felt even more intimate. It even had a whiff of the confessional about it, with Izzard self deprecatingly recounting getting more laughs from a German audience when getting the pronunciation wrong than when finally getting it right.

Part of Izzard’s wild surrealism and out-and-out silliness stems from his skill at creating effects. He does a mean chicken (a military advisor to Jules Caesar who later reappears as financial advisor to a mega-rich mole who has struck gold). Our favourite though is his speedy elephant playing the Beatles’ Michelle on a trumpet.

This is delightfully bonkers though somewhat removed from the underlying message of shared universal concerns and an inclusive approach to humanity. To get this you really need the full Monty of having been to all three shows.

Colin May