Izzard’s Humor, Irony Drive Home the Insights

Perhaps the surest confirmation of Eddie Izzard’s talent is that, after a few minutes,you forget that he’s strutting about in women’s platform shoes, flashing heavily made-up eyes and speaking through painted lips.

Izzard is a stand-up comic who just happens to be a transvestite--something that sets him apart from the crowd, to be sure, but not nearly so much as his intelligent, incisive humor does. A cult favorite at home in England, Izzard is now taking America by storm. Tickets to his “Dress to Kill” show were impossible to obtain during its brief run at a tiny West Hollywood theater last September. Thankfully, the show was recorded in San Francisco and debuts tonight on HBO.

Though Izzard makes passing reference to his transvestism, he’s more interested in sharing his unique take on European history, American culture, dating, gun violence and whatever else pops into his head. Somehow, he manages to bend ideas out of shape, bounce them off of fun-house mirrors--and get them to reflect back as sharply detailed truths. An expressive face and a voice dripping with irony help to drive home the observations.

Ruminating on British colonialism and the practice of claiming sovereignty by planting a flag, he pictures what might have happened in India. “You can’t claim us,” an inhabitant says, “we live here--500 million of us.” To which the British commander imperiously replies: “Do you have a flag? . . . No flag, no country.”

Izzard goes on to poke fun of Americans’ poor knowledge of their own history and declares Shaggy and Scooby the crowning creations of American literature.

In a delicious dig at Hollywood, he imagines an arty “Room With a View”-type British film doing just enough business in the States to be remade, with a $50-million boost in its budget, as “Room With a View of Hell.” The American version is riddled with violence, of course, and its dialogue is a repetitive hiccup of obscenities, which he proceeds to deliver in the obligatory tough-guy voice.

Though not all of the jokes hit their mark, Izzard’s aim is remarkably true--and he sustains it for an hour and a half. He caps his show with a routine spoken largely in French. Viewers need not be conversant in that tongue to understand the humor, however--for Izzard transcends language, just as he rises above sexuality and everything else.

* “Eddie Izzard: Dress to Kill” debuts tonight on HBO at 11:30, repeating Tuesday at midnight, Friday at 3:30 a.m. and other times. The network has rated it TV-MA (mature audiences only).