Stage

This actor and comedian, for reasons that his publicist would not share, is going to be at the Seattle Rep this coming weekend for two shows of a work-in-progress. What “work-in-progress” means for most solo performers is “I don’t know what the hell I’m doing yet but maybe an audience will help me figure that out.” But the most endearing quality of Izzard’s comedy is that he never seems to know quite what the hell he’s doing. His routines rush into each other with a manic carelessness, with absurd ideas becoming sillier and sillier until you scarcely remember what the original gag was. (An example: he suggests we test the NRA’s “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” maxim by training a monkey to fire a gun. Then he suggests that the monkey should be set against an armed Charlton Heston. Then he imagines filming it.) Izzard’s film and TV appearances have been multiplying recently, on FX’s “The Riches” and with roles in Ocean’s Thirteenand the upcoming Across the Universe, but live on stage he’s an entirely greater animal. If you can still get a ticket, go, and see the man John Cleese called “the Lost Python.” JOHN LONGENBAUGH