No Comfort Zone: Stewart Lee

It must be hard to be Stewart Lee.

And not because of the 150 nights he spent on the road last year or the fact that he's been doing comedy for 20 years (both of which he mentioned during the gig).

But because he's so supremely self-aware.

All the time you're watching him perform, you get the sense that he's not only watching himself with a critical eye, he's watching-you-watching-him and projecting a critical response from you too. That much apparently self-imposed criticism would be exhausting for any comedian.

But actually a lot of his comedy comes from this critical self-awareness. In fact, the last time I saw him it was even in the title of the show ("The 41st Best Stand Up Ever") which was a hard title to follow since it encouraged you to judge him against it. Even if you felt, as his ironic approach suggested, that he'd been robbed, he'd still sewn a seed of doubt in your mind.

His place in the comedy spectrum concerned him this time round too - only this time it was focused on the type of audience he attracts. The tone and title of the "41st Best" show may have suggested that the only way was down but actually his return to Norwich saw him move from the Playhouse to the much larger Theatre Royal.

You'd think he'd be happy about that but actually he just seemed uncomfortable in a different way.

This prompted him to do something I've never seen a comedian do before - he spent quite a significant part of the set working hard to whittle the audience down to a more manageable size. He dismissed a large part of the circle as "people's friends" rather than comedy fans and focused his attention on the stalls. His distinctions between those who had just 'come along' and real comedy goers were actually pretty funny - if you were sitting in the stalls.

He also gave us a good idea of his ideal audience and I discovered (somewhat to my surprise) that I didn't really fit the description. I was surprised because I'd really enjoyed the routines and I respected the sophistication of his subjects and style.

Last time it felt like the audience was too small for Stewart Lee, this time it felt like it was too large. If he does have a comfort zone when it comes to his audience, I was unfortunately left feeling like I wasn't in it.