Eddie Izzard Will Revisit the Classics at the Broward Center (2024)

Speaking to the wonderful Suzy Izzard, who still goes by Eddie while performing, is a lot like listening to her stand-up. Her answer to every question comes with the same marvelous stream-of-consciousness style that she performs on stage, chock full of references and jokes that will make one crack a smile or laugh.

Though some might have discovered Izzard through her acting, many likely stumbled upon one of her marvelous comedy specials (Dress to Kill, Circle, and Force Majeure, among others) on Comedy Central and fell down the rabbit hole. Those very viewers will be delighted to discover that, with her latest tour, Izzard is taking pieces from those classic stand-up acts and remixing them.

The tour, titled the Remix Tour with a subtitle of "the first 35 years," makes its first Florida stop at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts on Tuesday, October 22.

When asked to reflect on the fact that it's been a whopping 35 years, Izzard replies that she "was quite surprised at 35 years. They say as you get older, everything goes faster, but I suppose only if you're having a good time doing it. If you're in prison," Izzard muses before joking as a character. "Well, it just shot by. Twenty years in prison. It was a great laugh!"

Her pivots from jokes to history when speaking to New Times about the show come as quickly as they do on stage. She explains, "In stand-up, we've gotten into this thing of changing our shows. In the early days, people had a set, and they would just do that set. It was kind of locked off. You get your 20 minutes and do your 20 minutes forever until you die. But in the early '90s, everyone started changing it up and saying, 'Let's move stuff out. Bring in new stuff, change it up.' And now I've got all these pieces out there.

"Bands, when they're touring, the audience will say, 'Please, can we hear the classics?' And the band will want to play some new stuff, so the audience will say, 'Yes, you can do a little bit of new stuff, but we want to hear the classics as well,'" she jokes about audience demands at concerts. Izzard even questions the golden ratio: "Is it two-thirds classics, a third new stuff? Probably something like that — though maybe half and half."

She explains her rationale for the approach by noting, "This is what John Cleese was talking about with Python. When they'd do an old sketch, everyone knew how it sounded because they'd seen it on television or on DVD a number of times, and they wouldn't laugh because they knew where the laughs came. So what I'm doing with this remix is classic sketches –—Death Star canteen, weird things about the death of Caesar and being advised by chickens for his military battles, strange things about the Church of England and fundamentalists — but I've changed things because I get bored of it. So I changed the angles, actually reworking some of the stuff so that it makes it live for me again, and then it should work for the audience as well. If the performer is into it, then the audience is more likely to be into it. Sometimes, you can see that performers are just going through the motions and saying the old ones, but the fire doesn't happen."

Of course, with time comes change, and one has to wonder whether Izzard still shares the same interest in subjects from her youth. "One might have floated away from it, but no," she says before reflecting on all the things she loves. "Anything historical? I started talking about history because I was interested in it and I realized no one was overtly doing that at the time, and it's a nice place to try to set yourself apart. But I am so fascinated by that, but also —"

She breaks into another train of thought: "I was just on holiday, and every time we walked back to this Airbnb place that we were staying, this dog would start barking. I realized I've got that whole bit on dogs barking and what they're actually saying. And it's such an obvious piece, but I think it goes in such an unusual way. If they had FOXP2 injected into them, what would they say? There's nothing historical about that; it's all about behavior."

At the beginning of her latest stand-up special, Wunderbar, before she even steps on stage, Izzard speaks about how everything is so cyclical. Revisiting a work like Dress to Kill, one can see her talking about mass shootings and gender in a way that's still timely today.

When asked about what it's like being a trans performer within countries and states that are openly vitriolic against any kind of gender nonconformity, like her own Great Britain and our very own Florida, she says, "I just keep going. When I first came out, no one was talking about being trans. And it's not culture wars," she says, clearly setting up a joke. "The right wing loves this word 'war.' There are culture debates and culture disagreements, but there's no one invading land masses. That's what a war is.

"I don't mind if I go to places where they're going to be negative; I'll just carry on being my own self," Izzard declares. "That's what I did before when people were negative. The right wing will always encourage hatred and fear by saying, 'You've got to worry about this and worry about that,' but I keep going forward."

She continues, "If there's just passed some terrible negative law, I assume things will swing around. Look at marriage equality and the huge to-do on that. 'This can't happen! How can that happen!' and it's happened. You've got people talking complete nonsense out there, and they've been doing it for ages now. It's really weird nonsense; you've even got Dick Cheney and Liz Cheney both saying they're not going to vote for Trump, and they were on the far-right. It's not great that this is all happening, but we have to get through it to get to the other side."

For a trans writer like myself, speaking to Izzard about how her nonchalant and flippant presentation and gender fluidity over the years impacted my own identity was a necessity. The casualness to the way she presented, and decades later coming out as Suzy, certainly left an impact on others beyond me, but she modestly and refreshingly notes, "Well, I did it for myself. I thought I'd do it for myself, and then anyone can slipstream behind," she elaborates, just before returning to metaphors about cycles. "I'll just set up my own Peloton, and people can jump in behind."

Izzard returns to sincerity almost immediately, though. "It was selfish. I was trying to get myself to a good place and create a space around that. Selfish isn't quite the right word, but it could be deemed that you've got to make sure your mental health is good and that you're in a good place because then you have strength enough to be able to help other people."

Every bit of cultural or political citation she makes ties back into how she remains contemporary and up-to-date. Before jumping off the call, I ask her how she manages to always be in the know. "I inhale information," she admits. "Knowledge is power, they say. And I just have a thirst for knowledge. I know it is a more powerful position to be in when you know things."

Eddie Izzard. 8 p.m. Tuesday, October 22, at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts, 201 SW Fifth Ave., Fort Lauderdale; 954-462-0222; browardcenter.org. Tickets cost $49 to $99 via ticketmaster.com.