By Aline Mahrud

WORTH A LOOK?: ***

WHEN?: Sunday 16 June, running through Sunday 30 June 2024 RUNTIME: 140 minutes (including a 20-minute interval)

It’s unusual for a performer to address their audience directly at the end of a show but Izzard does so here acknowledging it divided critics, urging fans to take to social media to spread the word about its appeal to the ‘young and young at heart’ before it departs this venue in a fortnight to go around the world.

• Read on for reasons including how 1-person storytelling is a bit of a fashionable fad that is already starting to fray a little

One-woman shows like this have become rather fashionable although our opinion has been divided by Izzard’s own Great Expectations (Garrick Theatre), Andrew Scott’s Vanya (Duke Of York’s Theatre) and Sarah Snook’s Olivier Award-winning The Picture Of Dorian Gray which we walked out of (Theatre Royal Haymarket).

We’re in the front row here and the most affecting moment is when Izzard, who is playing all the 23 parts, comes out in the audience singing as Ophelia, former girlfriend of Hamlet, as she is slowly losing her mind following the death of her father.

Hamlet is not our favourite play and 1 we think of more as a rites of passage for a young actor to prove their mettle as the previously mentioned Andrew Scott did so memorably at the Almeida for Robert Icke and in the West End.

Writing in the programme, Izzard’s brother Mark explains his role in condensing the text which can be performed as 1 of Shakespeare’s longest works: ‘The brief was to take 1 of Britain’s greatest plays, reduce its full-text running time from 4 hours to 2 and tailor it for solo performance. One for the purists? Hardly. Ironically going out on a limb gave me a sense of freedom.

‘By cutting and splicing the text I was able to preserve the shape of the play in shortened form, and by replacing obscure words with modern equivalents I have endeavoured to deliver a script that is both authentically Shakespearean and intelligible to a modern audience with no prior knowledge of the play.’

Tightening it means we’re never far from a passage that has seeped its way into the nation’s consciousness (‘To be or not to be …’ or ‘Alas, poor Yorick …’) although the decision to realise characters Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as hand puppets is an obscure 1.

We’re joined in the audience by director Selina Cadell and if we had 1 criticism it is that the 1st half feels too long making us wonder whether the production is dispensing of its advertised interval.

At its close – ironic spoiler alert – there is a rather interminable sword fight and we would definitely have cut that and inserted the interval earlier.

Izzard is an engaging performer and it’s a terrific feat of memory to perform such a complicated piece solo for so long. But, for us, 1-person storytelling is a bit of a fashionable fad that is already starting to fray a little at the edges, rather like Izzard’s unexpected audience address tonight, and wear a little thin.

• Main picture via Facebook courtesy Riverside Studios Tickets
• Have you seen an Eddie Izzard show before and what did you think of it? Let us know what you thought in the comments below
• Enjoyed this preview? Follow monstagigz on Twitter @NeilDurham, email neildurham3@gmail.com and check us out on Instagram and Facebook