Definite Article

Eddie Izzard envisions the Death Star equipped with a fully functioning staff canteen. The resulting scenario involves Darth Vader trying to order lunch, getting scolded by a cafeteria worker for not having a tray, and ultimately pouting when the queue refuses to let him back in. It is a prime example of Izzard’s hyper-associative logic. The comic spends the set finding the mundane within the epic, at one point shrinking the universe down to the size of a stubbornly unpeelable orange defended by a microscopic German U-boat crew.

Filmed during a twelve-week residency at London’s Shaftesbury Theatre in 1996, the show caught Izzard transitioning from a local cult favorite to an international stage presence. She emerges onto the set from inside a giant mechanical book, delivering an extended stream of consciousness against a backdrop of projected literary quotes. The material bounces between Pavlov’s dogs, European languages, and the disproportionate quietness of English cinema. There is no overarching thesis or personal revelation, just a comedian working at peak stamina to explain the physics of supermarket shoplifting.