The force of nature that is Suzy Eddie Izzard has come to town.
Her 2025 tour was delayed by a serious knee injury.
The British comic explains the unfortunate turn of events in typical Izzard fashion.
"I'm not moving because I've busted my knee, I've got a leg brace on and had a procedure and they say I can't fly because of deep vein thrombosis," the comedian laments, before the trademark left turn.
"Yes, Deep Vein Thrombosis, which is the name of a band, a thrash metal band. Their singer is ... Anna Phylaxis."
If we weren't pressed for time in a busy media schedule, one suspects Izzard could effortlessly weave a five-minute monologue about imagined death metal band Deep Vein Thrombosis - their musical history, members, catalogue and any number of successes and tribulations.
Such is the uncanny and freewheeling Izzard brain that propelled a determined street performer, escape artist, sketch writer and aspiring thespian into one of the hottest tickets in British stand-up comedy in the 1990s, going on to have a career on stage and screen that continues to this day.
Lauded tours like Definite Article, Glorious and Dress to Kill established the glamorous Izzard as an architect of controlled comedy chaos, constructing long shows of playfully tangential, absurdist, self-referential and often improvised set-pieces that include madcap conversations between invented characters.
When Izzard is back on her feet and in Australia next year, fans will be treated to the Remix Tour - a 'greatest hits' show, of sorts.
"In the first 35 years of my stand-up career I came up with many weird and crazy comedy stories," the comic explains.
"The ones I like the best will be in my 2025 live Remix Tour."
The postponement sees Izzard in Oz for two months, with the comedy tour to roll into the Australian debut of her one-woman performance of Shakespeare's Hamlet, which is scheduled for 15 performances at the Sydney Opera House throughout June 2026.
Hamlet sees Izzard play 23 different characters on stage.
"Australia is going to be the first country to see me go from the earlier part of my career to the later part of my career, going from comedy to drama," Izzard explains, in mock regal tone.
"It's just like how Shakespeare went from his comedy to his dramas. I too have followed in his footsteps and I'm going from comedies to dramas and the story [in Hamlet] of a family and the country tearing itself apart."
It's not Izzard's first rodeo.
The actress previously performed a solo live adaptation of Charles Dickens' Great Expectations off Broadway to much acclaim, which required transformation into 21 different characters.
It was proof-of-concept for her take on Hamlet, which is co-adapted by her brother Mark.
"We've done [Hamlet] for two years, 50,000 tickets sold and I'm loving it," Izzard says.
"And it is using all the skills of my life really. And, coming from a street performer, early Shakespearean actors, and actors from the Elizabethan times, were pretty much street performers because it was outdoors.
"The show started at two o'clock. It could start raining, there could be thunder, and people shouting at them or whatever - just like I had when I spent four years at Covent Garden in London being a street performer. I can bring all that skill to it. My life training has been so unusual."
Those familiar with Izzard's stand-up are attuned to the comic's ability to hold hilarious conversations between multiple characters.
But in Hamlet this skill is used to dramatic effect, with care given to where each character remains on stage in the audience's imagination before Izzard transforms into another.
"It's like a piece of dance or a chess game against yourself," the actress says.
"You flip to one side, then you flip back. As long as I keep the architecture - and I spent a lot of time on the architecture of the characters on the stage - the audience learns to keep the character in their mind's eye."
Izzard was always drawn to Shakespeare but her route to the Bard's work on stage was less than direct.
"I had been thinking of Iago as a way into Othello, or Richard III was a character I really wanted to play," Izzard explains.
"But no one was putting me on their [cast] list. So I went into sketch comedy, then into street performing, then to stand up, then into drama - but drama was my first love. So that's somewhere I always wanted to get to."
Snagging roles in films has never been a problem - Izzard has appeared alongside George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Robin Williams and Dame Judi Dench, and worked with directors like Steven Soderbergh and Peter Bogdanovich.
But when it came to landing a juicy Shakespearean role on stage, Izzard took matters into her own hands.
"I thought, 'Well, no one's giving me Iago, no one's giving me anything. So I'll set it up myself," she says.
"And time was ticking. So I went for Hamlet. And as soon as I started rehearsing Hamlet, I felt very at home. And that's interesting. I don't know what that means."
William Shakespeare's Hamlet, written at the turn of the 17th century, is widely known for the titular character's oft-quoted soliloquy ("to be, or not to be, that is the question"), in which the vengeful Danish prince contemplates life and death.
"I didn't feel the weight of Hamlet and 'to be, or not to be'," Izzard explains.
"In my first performance of that [speech], I felt a little weight but that went pretty soon. And now every time I go into [the speech], I go into it in a slightly different way.
"And my attitude to the audience is that they're the Greek chorus of my mind, I'm just checking in with my own brain. I do my soliloquies to them and not at them."
History, both modern and ancient, informs much of Izzard's work, in both drama and stand-up.
Her last comedy special, 2022's Wunderbar, even went back as far as the Big Bang.
The comedian is an avid history buff and autodidact.
"I liked [history] in school, I liked the subject," she explains.
"I just didn't like writing essays about it. But I did like finding patterns. I feel I can see patterns in human behaviour. If you keep looking at the patterns from before, we will probably repeat those similar patterns going forward. So that's why I like looking at history.
"I think [Winston] Churchill did that as well. You can study human behaviour and it ends up with one person quite often grabbing a bunch of people and saying, 'You're going to do what I say. I'm the biggest bully going. Well, you disagreed and you're dead now, aren't you? Anyone else disagree?'
"That keeps happening [throughout history]. And that's what kings were. They were just the biggest bullies. So yes, I love history. And I love bringing it into comedy."
