Stewart Lee - Carpet Remnant World

Stewart Lee
Assembly Rooms

It seems like Stewart Lee gets more joy from baffling the audience than from making them laugh, but this in itself may be an act of deceit. For Lee glides effortlessly from fact to fiction throughout his ramblings, which may or may not feature a carpet remnant world.

Lee also gives the illusion of a show hastily thrown together and made up on the spot, mainly in response to our inadequate skills as a comedy audience. We the audience, it seems, are the main target, well us and the tabloid press and the social media, Twitter in particular comes under the most sustained barrage of abuse.

The bumbling, middle-aged Dad burdened with the brunt of parenting is a disarmingly believable character. He rants against the modern world, from its shiny new technology to its skinny new comedians. The character is only partly an act and you feel that although his vitriol for the audience isn't totally sincere his attacks on social media are more genuine.

Lee eschews a moral message or the use of his routine to deal with emotional issues like grief, but the act does not lack substance, his rants are really very enjoyable whether for their absurdity or for their intelligence. Perhaps there is also a message in there too about not being taken in by what you read or hear whether it be on YouTube, Twitter or in the Daily Mail.

Reviewer: Seth Ewin

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