Having become the biggest comedy tour ever in the UK I had high hopes when Lee Evans' tour came onto television recently. I have enjoyed him as a performer before, finding him a nice mix of imaginative routines and physical humour. With this show though I was a bit put off by him from the early stage as his material seemed disjointed from his physical routine; the latter mainly being exaggerated actions and lots of face pulling. Meanwhile his material is a rather forced series of observations on real life, most of which are exaggerated with his movements and do somewhat smack of desperation.
He does say some funny things and at times his delivery did hit the mark but too often I just thought he was making a big deal out of nothing; for example mocking the "attempted delivery" notes made me think actually they were pretty useful, security checks at banks also was a pointless target and it was like this several times during the show, not that insightful, more just frantic and transferring energy to the audience by nature of his delivery. His material was surprisingly crude and I didn't think he needed it all.
What surprised me once was how very structured his material was; the show I saw was from Cardiff but I reckon they could have edited between shows and I would not have noticed because it is so samey. I know this is the same with everyone (everyone tours with the same gags) but Evans' flow from one subject to another just made it very obviously rehearsed and preparing taking the feel of spontaneity out of it. I could not help but contrast this with Eddie Izzard who I saw once live deliver line-for-line the same show I already owned on CD from San Francisco; yes it was a b*gger that I knew it all already but his delivery convinced me that he was thinking it all up as he went along. With Evans I longed for this feeling but it never came.
He is still funny and his energy is infectious but I just felt all these little niggles undermined the show as a whole and that I wasn't that impressed even if I a bit amused. Evans is a great comedian but this show isn't evidence of it and he's been better elsewhere. Fans will probably love it for obvious reasons and there is enough here to justify the casual viewer having a go, but for me personally I didn't think it was worthy of being the UK's biggest ever comedy tour.
