British comedian Eddie Izzard is coming to Bridges Auditorium at Pomona College on Sunday, Dec. 2 at 8 p.m. Izzard, who is known for stream of consciousness-style monologues, recently performed in front of a sold-out crowd at University of Colorado, Boulder. Bridges Events Manager Sharon Kuhn has been a fan of Izzard for years and, with the news of his college show, she decided to bring him to Pomona.
Kuhn said Izzard’s show is part of an attempt to attract students to Bridges and to get the venue’s name back out into the community. Students, faculty, staff and community members all expressed excitement about Izzard’s work, making him a good fit, according to Kuhn.
Izzard is “funny intellectually,” Kuhn said. She also said he is a history lover as well as very topical and timely, qualities she thought would make him especially appealing to a college audience.
Izzard’s routines are generally very minimalistic, with little more than a microphone onstage, and he is known for making up material on the spot and noting the audience’s response on his hand for future reference. At his University of Colorado show, Izzard opened with a few location-specific jokes, but Kuhn suspected the majority of his show here will consist of testing material for his upcoming European tour. As Izzard is a highly interactive comedian, attendees can expect to be asked questions as part of the act and to be asked for their reactions to determine the direction of the show.
He is also known for his transvestism and mimicry talents as well as a dry, Monty Python-style humor. Much of his material comes from contemporary popular culture, and performance-goers may recognize him from films such as Across the Universe, Ocean’s 12 and 13 and The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. Tickets for the show are available at the Bridges box office for $23 for students and $38 for the general public, and online at http://www.pomona.edu/bridges.