Live at the Ambassadors (1993)

Original title

Eddie Izzard: Live at the Ambassadors

Directed by

John Gordillo

Genre

stand-up comedy

Country

United Kingdom

Runtime

1h 27m

Rating

6.8 of 10 from 14 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

This is a video recording of Eddie Izzard's 1993 stand-up comedy show from her debut run at the Ambassadors Theatre in London. It captures her early, less polished style before her cross-dressing became a major part of her act.

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What happens

Live at the Ambassadors is a video by Eddie Izzard made at her West End debut in 1993 at the Ambassadors Theatre. The show originally had a 4-week run, which was extended twice due to the popularity of the performance. The video led to Izzard being invited to the Just For Laughs Montreal Comedy Festival, awarded a British Comedy Award for "Top Stand Up Comedian", and receiving an Olivier Award nomination for "Outstanding Achievement". Live at the Ambassadors was Izzard's first show made available on VHS, which for many years was out of production and very difficult to come by. Izzard hated her physical appearance on the show, and was also on low performance rights with the copyright owner, and thus a DVD version will never be released. However, it is available on CD from the official Eddie Izzard website. Fans and critics alike recognise the change in Izzard's comedy over the years; Live at the Ambassadors is an example of Izzard's very early and less confident style of stand-up (during the interval, Izzard comments that the first half was ' a bit clunky at the beginning'). In particular, there is very little evidence of her cross dressing, something that would become a major part of the Izzard 'brand' later in her career, with only simple nail varnish obvious. However, her bizarre sense of humour has remained the same throughout performances, and various themes and ideas that can be seen in later recordings can be identified in Live at the Ambassadors such as Christian hymns (and religion in general), politics, history, cult television and wordplay/oddities within the English language. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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