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Basic LeeLeicester Square Theatre, London – live review

Stewart Lee promises his new show Basic Lee will be a return to simple comedy roots, but as always with this most beguiling and challenging comedian, nothing is quite as simple as he pretends. Tom Parry reviews.

By Tom Parry in Louder Than War Posted on Thursday, September 29th, 2022

According to the poster, Stewart Lee’s new stand-up show is a back to basics return to the straightforward simplicity of his early years. This, we are assured, won’t contain the convoluted set-ups and “overarched interlinked narratives” which artfully mess with accepted standards of comedy. The tools which elevated Lee to a status of singular brilliance when set against his peers on the circuit are being abandoned, it claims. But within the first few minutes of Basic Lee, it’s obvious that the advertised premise – “Pure. Simple. Classic.” – is being played with. Or course it is. Stewart Lee would never do a direct A to B performance packed with belly-laugh gags, pithy real-life anecdotes and easy mickey-taking. That would be beneath him. Committed fans don’t go to his gigs for an easy ride. Instead, the new show begins with what he claims is the only decent opening routine he has ever written, from back in the late 1980s.

It’s about him coming up with a series of blindingly witty retorts to an evangelist Christian knocking on his door. But even that routine, he quickly admits, is a lie. And then we get tangled up in an imagined conversation between an imagined version of his old self and the guy at the door. Both realising the cultural references from that time might be lost on a 2022 audience.

Later, the audience is ironically mocked for not having the basic knowledge of “history, politics and culture (high and low)” that Lee expects of his punters. It’s a tease of course, a knowing wink. In a rare moment of sincerity towards the end of the night Lee admits he is actually grateful for people coming to watch him. The mask slips briefly.

Basic Lee, showing at London’s Leicester Square Theatre until December 17 before an extensive nationwide tour in 2023, is almost confessional in parts. The best section, an extended riff on the ludicrous snobbery that pervades the arts in Britain flips the material on its head. Nothing in Basic Lee is simply what it purports to be. When he reassures us that what he’s saying is not a “clever double-bluff” it definitely is. Or maybe it isn’t. He is constantly taking the piss out of himself, and us too. Britain’s greatest stand-up (though he would reject the accolade) cannot help but deconstruct, subvert and undermine. It’s what he does better than anyone else in the business. He is so acutely self-aware that it is almost tiring. So much to think about that is both amusing and slightly unnerving in this latest two-hour show. It’s brilliantly choreographed, razor-sharp and laugh-aloud hilarious, but anything but basic.

Written by Tom Parry in Louder Than War on 29th September 2022. Filed Under: Basic Lee, Leicester Square Theatre, Reviews
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