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SNOWFLAKE/TORNADOStewart Lee: Snowflake/Tornado

Stewart Lee takes Netflix comedians, Tony Parsons and his own health to task in an unstoppable two-part show

By Jay Richardson in The List Posted on Tuesday, March 22nd, 2022

Netflix’s arrival has reinforced the notion of a stand-up hierarchy, while complicating the perennially wretched subjects of taste and offence. Watching any comic on a subscription service implies consent to hear certain material. Yet the streaming juggernaut’s power and reach means any targets of alleged ‘punching down’ (as in Jimmy Carr’s recent gypsy Holocaust gag) can’t escape the joke.

Still, to hear Stewart Lee tell it, notwithstanding his status as the UK’s best comedian, as declared by a national newspaper, he is one of Netflix’s biggest victims (already physically deteriorating in his fifties after a long pandemic). Not because, as he’s previously suggested, the streamer dismissed his stand-up as ‘too parochial’ to feature. But because for two years, their online description for his belatedly acquired BBC Comedy Vehicle series was actually that of shlock horror film Sharknado.

The apoplexy this provokes is the basis for Tornado, the first hour of his performance, followed by a second, Snowflake, in which he defends both being ‘woke’ and his own reputation against a character assassination by journalist Tony Parsons; it’s the sort of cultural war nonsense Lee delights in turning on itself with pedantry and some superb setpieces that gently push his own capacities as a performer, while typically subverting the relationship between comic and audience. Netflix heavyweights Carr, Ricky Gervais and Dave Chappelle are among those drenched in irresistible sardonic bile as Lee extends the notion of (commercially) ‘saying the unsayable’ to ludicrous degrees, making his moral points with caustic venom.

By focusing on the comedian pantheon and his place in it once again, Lee veers close to self-parody. Yet his peerless execution, the multi-faceted richness of his persecution complex and his sheer bloody-minded commitment to a persona and standards ensure that the laughs build an unstoppable momentum.

Stewart Lee: Snowflake/Tornado tours until Sunday 3 July; reviewed at King’s Theatre, Glasgow.

Written by Jay Richardson in The List on 22nd March 2022. Filed Under: Reviews, Snowflake/Tornado
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