Noel Fielding takes his show on the road
British cult sensation Noel Fielding practices what can perhaps best be described as art without borders. Fielding — whose flamboyant manner is more than matched by his innovative, idiosyncratic wit — has spent years captivatingly breaking down boundaries between comedy, theater, visual arts, animation and music.
“If I go and see stand-up, I love it,” said Fielding, “but if I go and see something a bit different with lots of different elements to it, I always feel more satisfied afterwards.”
This spring, Fielding is taking his show to the United States. After playing huge rooms in the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Australia, Fielding will be in America for a run of gigs that includes engagements March 15 to 19 at the Gramercy Theatre in New York City.
“It’s quite tricky because here I’m not that known,” Fielding said. “In England I’ve got a budget to make a big show and I can make the money back by touring and playing Australia and stuff because I’m quite known (there), but here I’m not.
“So I’m doing quite small venues but I’m still trying to do the same show that I did in Australia to 5,000 people. So, it’s going to be quite tricky because some of the venues aren’t that big. We have a whole team of people who make it happen, they travel with us and stuff and it’s quite a big show really. So, it’ll be quite funny doing it in smaller venues because the show’s slightly too big for those venues.”
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Fielding has developed a devoted underground American fan base thanks to his work as the co-creator of the alternative comedy duo the Mighty Boosh, the stars of an eponymous TV series which aired on BBC Three from 2004 to 2007. Fielding and Boosh partner Julian Barratt toured the world from 2008 to 2009, eventually playing London’s Wembley and 02 arenas.
But just as they reached their peak popularity in their home country, the pair fizzled out before getting the chance to bring the party to America.
“We’d sort of tired ourselves out,” Fielding said. “We we knackered. We’d just done a 100-date tour in England and Julian was about to have kids and stuff, things had gotten pretty crazy. So at the point where it was all ready for us over here to come over and make a little bit of impact, it just was bad timing on a personal level, really. So I always kind of regretted that we didn’t do it.
“We were over here and Robin Williams came to see our show at the Roxy. We went to meet Mike Myers. Jack Black was into what we were doing, Ben Stiller — we even met the ‘South Park' dudes. We’d been offered a TV thing by IFC and it was all set up for us but we were a bit burnt out, really. At that point we’d been touring and doing stuff for 10 years without a break. We probably should have just had a year off, come back and did it then, but we kind of slightly disintegrated at that point.”
Now, Fielding is ready to make his long-awaited stateside splash. He’s already logged appearances promoting his tour on “The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon” and “Conan,” hyping what’s sure to be a one-of-a-kind night. Fielding’s live show blends traditional stand-up comedy with Mighty Boosh-style character pieces, music and even live animation segments.
“I always fantasized about doing a stand-up show with just me and a microphone, and then I do that for a while and then I get bored with the limitations of that, I think probably because I went to art school and I’m a quite visual person,” Fielding said. “I love stand-up and I love the speed of it. It’s quite punk. You can have an idea and then you can go to a club that night and try it out and you know instantly whether it’s worked or not. I love the nature of that. It’s amazingly punk and immediate and brilliant.
“But I also feel like there’s a limitation as to what you can do with stand-up; not the great stand-ups like (Richard) Pryor, they’re so good that you don’t mind listening to them for an hour and a half and you don’t really want anything else from them in a weird way. But with me, I write stand-up and I think, ‘I’d like to see this with costumes or animation’ or ‘I’d like to make this into a theme with other actors or comedians.’ There’s always that temptation for me.”
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AN EVENING WITH NOEL FIELDING
WHEN: 7 p.m. March 15 to 19
WHERE: Gramercy Theatre, 127 E. 23rd St., New York City
TICKETS: $46.50
INFO: 212-614-6932, thegramercytheatre.com or noelfielding.co.uk/tour