Stewart Lee

Traverse, Edinburgh
Brian Logan
Friday August 23, 2002
The Guardian

"This is my first mid-30s, pretentious one-man show," says Stewart Lee in an apologetic intro to Pea Green Boat. This isn't stand-up, he warns, so prepare not to laugh. The preamble promises some daring dramatic experiment. In fact, this solo delve into Edward Lear's most famous poem is sweet and very funny - but doesn't deviate greatly from the stand-up with which Lee made his name.

It is structured as the story of a short time in Lee's life. His career was hitting the skids when he was commissioned to write a film of Edward Lear's life. At the same time, his toilet was broken and he couldn't go to the loo. He interweaves these unlikely story strands into an examination of The Owl and the Pussycat - a boat trip, he points out, undertaken by a bird and its natural predator. Many of the show's laughs derive from Lee's droll determination to take the ditty literally: how can an owl play a small guitar? How can a turkey conduct a wedding ceremony? He recites extracts from the owl's travelogue, to the moody strains of an accompanying cello. Guest star Simon Munnery appears as Lear, and as the would-be biopic star Ray Winstone, "from Scum, and Sexy Beast".

The storytelling structure sets up expectations of dramatic fulfilment on which Pea Green Boat doesn't yet deliver. This is still, essentially, stand-up, even if its subject matter is unusually esoteric and biographical. Lee is a comedy master by now, and his own pleasure and nonplussed sense of absurdity constantly amuses. He makes his material seem like a veritable mine of comic potential, so that on Day 47 of the owl's journal, when the boat trip ends, Lee finds the bird complaining: "But I've nearly learnt to play Mull of Kintyre".

Source - Guardian