Actor/comedian/marathoning fundraising activist Suzy Eddie Izzard (she/her) stopped by Chicago Shakespeare Theater for a chinwag with artistic director Edward Hall last week, also taking many audience questions in a freewheeling, 80-ish minute chat about her life and career to date. She sported a ponytail, zip-up gym jacket, and comfortable black palazzo pants over white trainers, to accommodate a recent left knee injury.
Izzard praised Chicago as “an ancient city on the Western edge of early America,” with a “notable history of comedy, theater and bootlegging, and a tough, really cold, big city with a big heart.” She performed her accessible one-person Hamlet, featuring 23 distinct characters on Navy Pier in April 2024 to much acclaim, a production that has sold over 50,000 tickets worldwide (she also still performs standup as well as a production of Great Expectations).
Her standup comedy chops helped her remember and connect with the over 12,500 words in that trimmed script (adapted by Izzard’s academic brother Mark). Izzard talked about the arduous rehearsal process and three long weeks of previews to work out any kinks, leading her to proudly proclaim that “I haven’t asked for a line since my New York run.” A difference between her comedy experience and performing Shakespeare boils down to this: in standup, one “pushes in,” rather than theater, which benefits from “leaning back.”
Reflecting on how and why she was drawn to performance, Izzard recalled losing her mom when she was six, then later when she saw a Christopher Fry play and discovered the joy of theater. She took public transport and snuck onto the famous Pinewood Studios film lot when she was seven. The Tony nominee’s first performance was as a street urchin in Beauty and the Beast, where she stole the team's one group line for herself. “I knew I needed and wanted that,” Izzard said. “I was aching for love,” eventually becoming a “relentless bastard.”
At boarding school for 12 years, Izzard was a “girly” choir member and initially couldn’t read Shakespeare due to dyslexia. She learned to feel and live the scripts in a visceral way, emotional but not academic. “I eat creativity like popcorn,” she said. Her biggest comedy influence was Monty Python because they were intelligent AND silly, attending seven of their last 10 shows. She also adores the British Avengers TV series.
Izzard spent four years giving street performances, much like in the Bard’s time, to “build up my gut, from street to standup to Shakespeare.” In addition to English, she also performs plays and comedy sets in German (her best second language), Spanish (third best) and French, although "Hollywood and rock and roll" have propelled English around the world. She added that “knowing those languages also increases my confidence and covers the work with layers of interesting mess.”
Izzard proudly stated that she already has 206 Hamlet performances under her Spanx, hot on the heels of John Gielgud’s 500 count. (She performed Hamlet at Chicago Shakes in April 2024.) Due to the nature of this adaptation, it feels like “every night is press night,” so her director encouraged her to “find each line” in an emotional corridor. “Hamlet is not an anti-hero, but an accidental hero,” she has realized.
She shared some of Shakespeare’s writing challenges during England’s Protestant and Catholic schisms, and noted that the female characters of Ophelia and Gertrude are underwritten. She also talked about how she sticks to the script, but occasionally improvises (in meter!) when a line is dropped, recalling once that “I know a hawk from a handsaw" became “I know a horse from a herring.” She’d like to play Iago and Richard III (Hall invited her to CST for both roles). Izzard said that she’s happy to perform Shakespeare solo, or with loads of other people.
Under the banner of “Make Humanity Great Again,” she’s run 31 marathons in 32 days (raising over 4.5 million pounds for charity), an interest started as a military kid, for fitness, adventure and now to raise funds. In South Africa, she ran for 11 hours and five minutes in one go, and she also ran 27 marathons in 27 days to commemorate Nelson Mandela’s 27 years in prison, for a total of 130 races to date. “When I run, my eyes are like a camera in a documentary,” she said. In addition to being a human lens, Izzard is also a writer, publishing the autobiography Believe Me: A Memoir of Love, Death and Jazz Chickens in 2017, even though “I’m the most boring person I know,” she said.
When asked why politics is important to her, Izzard said that it’s soft power, from activism to positivity, sharing the wish that “everyone in the world should have a fair chance at life.” Regarding creeping censorship, Izzard chastised the current penchant for “punching down.” Instead, comedians should be “punching yourself in the face!” When asked about fame and being recognized when out and about in places like Hollywood, she said “only the cool people know who I am,."
Izzard’s 40-year showbiz anniversary is this January, so “we’re playing the long game,” the warm, wonderful and witty actor noted. “I take the fine wine approach to a career.” When asked about the importance of art, culture and theater during this chaotic period, Izzard said, “It’s god-like to make a thing that wasn’t there before, and I want to entertain, educate and enlighten in a positive way.” Speaking of an Almighty, Izzard wondered why some zealots focus on an imaginary old man controlling the world. “It's weird,” she said. “If you take God out of the picture, then the world makes sense.”
“Be brave and curious,” Izzard advised. “Not fearful and suspicious.” Many audience members thanked Izzard for her body of work and this return visit to Chicago, asking her advice on how to to weather attacks on democracy. She said that her glass is “two-thirds full,” so when progress rolls back, she believes that it will push forward again. “This will pass,” she encouraged. And, if you hear a negative, then riposte with a double positive.
Izzard will continue to tour the one-person Hamlet in winter and spring in Los Angeles, Austin, Toronto, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC. Her Remix tour will hit Australia, New Zealand and Singapore in May 2026.
Upcoming Chicago Shakespeare Theater shows include a short version of Hamlet, a Royal Shakespeare Theatre production of Hamnet based of Maggie O’Farrell’s novel about the real-life Shakespeare (now also an Oscar-nominated motion picture), and The Merry Wives of Windsor in April.
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