“I don’t have a dead name and I don’t have a dead career”: Eddie Izzard on gender-fluid theatre and playing every role in Hamlet
Ahead of her new production of the Shakespearian tragedy, the legendary British comedian talks blazing trails, memorizing 30,500 words and her surprising connection to small-town Ontario
British comedian and actor Eddie Izzard—or Suzy, if you prefer—has been defying boundaries for her whole career: first as a gender-fluid comedian whose multilingual stand-up sets brought her international fame and more recently as a would-be candidate for the UK Labour Party. It’s almost enough to overshadow her dramatic chops, which are substantial: she was nominated for a Tony in 2003 for the play A Day in the Death of Joe Egg and launched a one-woman performance of Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations in 2022 to rave reviews. Izzard’s newest act, a solo performance of Hamlet in which she plays all 23 parts, will premiere in Toronto on February 25. We caught up with her to talk about memorizing 30,500 words, blazing so many trails and her surprising connection to small-town Ontario. CAA Theatre, February 25 to 28
What made you want to play Hamlet? I first wanted to do Shakespeare at school when I was seven, but I was small and severely, atypically dyslexic. I kept asking for bigger roles—not just spear carriers, please!—but they’d have me read lines, and I just couldn’t do it. So I pushed away from drama and decided to do comedy instead. Only much later did I say, Right, I’m going to do drama as well. I wasn’t exactly at the top of most people’s lists for Shakespearian roles.
Can you recite the whole play in your sleep by now? That’s almost what I was doing. Each night, I’d run one act before I’d let myself go to sleep, and it worked. I never ask for lines onstage. I’ve made it a high-wire act for myself. I have to just trust that the lines are in me. It’s like driving: it’s a bizarre thing for humans, who evolved to hunt and gather, to do every day. But we make it seem easy.
What’s the hardest part of preparing for 23 different roles? Learning 30,500 words was tough, because I couldn’t rehearse properly until I had them all in my head. But, once they were, I found I could drive the play differently each night, with each character being in a slightly different emotional spot. That’s what keeps it alive and boiling. Otherwise it becomes rote, like the prayers I had to recite in boarding school for 12 years.
Do you have any pre-show rituals? My ritual is that, mentally, I’m already onstage. Even when I’m getting into costume, I’m already there. I have this weird thing about imagining myself being in the story. Being onstage is pure oxygen for me. It’s life off-stage that’s almost unreal.
We’re delighted to have you in Toronto. Is there anything you’re looking forward to doing while you’re here? I first visited Toronto when I was nine years old, in the summer of 1971, when my family spent the summer at a friend’s place in Campbellford, north of Belleville. At that age, two months was a solid chunk of my life. It was a wonderful thing to be there, fishing and swimming in the loch and going through the woods. I did Great Expectations at the CAA Theatre during Covid, and now I’ll be doing Hamlet there. I also filmed the Dan Brown series for Peacock, The Lost Symbol, here. I have a long relationship with Toronto, and it’s great to be back.
What is it like playing two different genders onstage? As a trans person, I want to honour both the male and the female characters. I’ve had great reactions to my Ophelia, which I’m very pleased about. I’ve been out as a trans person for 41 years now, and my mental health is strong because of it. Amid all the dishonesty in the world right now, what I say to people is, “If you see a negative, do a double positive.” One of my superpowers is that I look and sound quite ordinary, but I’m doing extraordinary things.
You’re known as a comedian, but Hamlet is a tragedy. Do you feel the urge to inject some humour into it? No, this is a drama. The grave-digging scene in Hamlet is very funny, as is the character Hamlet’s own wit. But this is a tragedy about a family and a country tearing itself apart, so don’t get the wrong end of the stick. I have my comedy, and I can do it whenever I want to. I didn’t cauterize that. But it’s like how I’m named both Eddie and Suzy. I don’t have a dead name and I don’t have a dead career. Both can live.
What’s next for you? More Hamlet. I’m taking it around the world. I want to do the soliloquies in each country’s local language but do the main show in English—otherwise I’d go out of my mind. Plus more films, more drama and politics—I won’t stop until I become a Member of Parliament in the UK.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Anthony Milton is a freelance journalist based in Toronto specializing in long-form magazine writing. He previously worked as an assistant editor at Toronto Life, where he launched the Front Row newsletter. He regularly contributes all sorts of stories to the magazine, including deep dives on sports, business and housing as well as short-form commentary on our ever-changing city, from its obsession with cherry blossoms to its maddening NIMBYism. His work has also appeared in Maclean’s, Ricochet, TVO, the Trillium and more.
