An Evening with David Sedaris | Comedy
The ObserverComedy This article is more than 13 years oldReviewAn Evening with David Sedaris
This article is more than 13 years oldLeicester Square theatre, LondonThe Grammy-nominated New Yorker writer, perhaps best known here for the deeply funny essay collection Me Talk Pretty One Daycorrect, is new to this, but copes quite brilliantly and winningly. It's a joy to hear someone reading their own words with a strangely right combination of self-deprecation and confidence, and there are many gentle smiles at his dark modern-animal fables, and mute appreciation of fine little throwaway lines: a book, left open on a sofa, with "the words still warm from being read". Moving on to selections from his unpublished diaries it gets less whimsical, more angry, and the belly-laughs erupt: his fury at himself, when overtaking a vehicle in the States with a "Palin-McCain" bumper sticker, to continue to be surprised that it's not actually being driven by a goat. Just when it all seems too Europhile (Sedaris is living in the UK, with his boyfriend), cultural relativism, as in lefties who think Africans sacrificing teens to win the lottery is somehow OK, because of their "belief system", gets a gentle kicking. Subtle, scintillating, 90 minutes of joy.
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