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Carpet Remnant WorldReview: Stewart Lee, Nottingham Playhouse

By Nick Parkhouse in This Is Nottingham Posted on Friday, February 24th, 2012

AS he reminded us during his latest beautifully structured show – the depressingly titled Carpet Remnant World – Stewart Lee has been a stand-up for a quarter of a century.

During that time his popularity has waxed and waned, although thanks to recent award winning BBC series Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle, the 43 year old is once again filling theatres across the UK.

Lee’s appeal becomes the focus for much of the first half of this set. The comic clearly enjoys playing to loyal fans who ‘get’ his style of humour, and his constant disappointment with sections of the Playhouse crowd who weren’t ‘his fans’ was a theme throughout.

It would be fair to say that people new to Lee’s unique brand of stand-up might not know what to make of it. He’s clearly not a populist comic and from his lack of restraint when criticising the current brand of stand ups (or ‘the young Russells’ as he calls them) has no desire to be.

Mostly carefully scripted – a segment about Nottingham’s new identity as the ‘City of Caves’ notwithstanding – Lee’s shows are always carefully choreographed with a clever use of deconstruction and call backs.

Indeed, he even sometimes links the two techniques, such as when he feels he had to explain a particularly clever call back made in a foreign language.
And, no subject is off limits in a Lee show. His material this time touched on Islam, odd shop names, Scooby Doo, Margaret Thatcher and Twitter, with much of his ire reserved for the social networking site – or ‘the Stasi for the Angry Birds generation’ as he calls it.

A Stewart Lee show is the standard to which all stand-up comics should aspire. Long may he return to the City Riddled with Caves

Written by Nick Parkhouse in This Is Nottingham on 24th February 2012. Filed Under: Carpet Remnant World, Reviews
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