In high heels and pantyhose, Izzard wears his humor well

By Ed Siegel, Globe Staff, 10/23/2003

Laugh and the world laughs with you. Put on a dress, and they're rolling in the aisles.

It's probably no coincidence that four of the most popular, and funniest, theatrical events to hit Boston lately have involved men dressing as women. First, there was Dame Edna, followed by "The Producers" and "Hairspray."

But Eddie Izzard, whose sold-out shows run through Saturday at the Shubert Theatre, is a different kettle of transvestite. There are no faux femme poses or lah-di-dah flounces in his "Sexie" show. Izzard is a self-described regular bloke who likes watching soccer, drinking beer, using power tools, driving trucks, and dressing up in spaghetti-strapped tops, slit skirts, and high heels.

Unlike Dame Edna, the clothes don't make the man's routine. Aside from an opening ode to the joys of having breasts, Izzard's red lipstick and sexily stockinged legs have little to do with most of his routines. But when the guy standing in front of you carrying on about life's absurdities looks like a cross between Tony Curtis in "Some Like It Hot" (with a more modern hairdo) and Shelley Winters before she went to fat, you don't exactly forget about his appearance.

Nor, I would think, does he want you to. Throwing the audience a little off balance is part of every successful comedian's story. With Izzard, the clothes perfectly complement a surrealistically offhand style in which he seems to be making things up as he goes along. He even makes a written script seem like ad-libbed stream of consciousness, as he did in his excellent, more traditionally garbed performance last year in "A Day in the Death of Joe Egg."

As Izzard stands there, cool and elegant, adding aristocratic and often addled British accents to the unlikeliest of characters, there's something comforting about how his casual swagger deflates manly men.

The persona also helps with the more subversive elements of his show. Izzard played Lenny Bruce in a British production of the play "Lenny," and he comes across as Bruce's more mellow, less macho British cousin. His routine about Jesus, Abraham, and Mohammed seeing what has been wrought in their name recalls Bruce's routine about bringing back Jesus and Moses, who are irate over the policies of Bishop Fulton J. Sheen and Cardinal Spellman. Bruce, though, maintained a rat-a-tat rap; with Izzard it's a hilariously understated "This isn't what we meant."Izzard's also no fan of America's gun culture or the Republican Party, but he doesn't linger over his distastes. Nor is he particularly moralistic. He's more a master of quick bursts than sustained monologues, as when he returns to his regular-guyness: "I've learned martial arts. I've learned sashimi, where you fling bits of fish at people."Much of the material could be written for any middle-of-the-road comedian.But often it's not the substance but the style -- a hesitation before delivering his punch line here, a slightly disapproving tone applied to an outrageous situation there -- that makes Izzard special.In his routine about superheroes, Izzard says, "The big similarity between superheroes and transvestites is we both change before we help people." Then, after one of his perfectly timed pauses, "The big difference is transvestites don't actually help people."Anyone in need of a laugh might disagree after 2 1/2 hours of Eddie Izzard. Ed Siegel can be reached at siegel@globe.com.