After three full-length Man-Wulf shows (two of which were filmed) in the Belgrade’s main house, Stewart Lee wrapped up his time at the venue with an hour-long afternoon sojourn in the more intimate confines of the B2 auditorium.

Pea Green Boat is a totally different show, and change of pace, for the comic who first created and performed his dark interpretation of Edward Lear’s classic Owl and the Pussycat poem almost 25 years ago, and has revisited it a number of times in the intervening years.

The latest iteration is effectively a mini variety show, mixing stand-up comedy (he opens with a brief routine he claims kicked off his shows in 1989), live music (from teenage Coventry musician Archie Ingram, aka Stone Anthem, a multi-instrumentalist wunderkind who has been releasing music since the age of 12), a complete reading of Pea Green Boat (now a fully-fledged book), and audience Q&A.

The unlikely combination makes for an agreeable afternoon’s entertainment, albeit one that proves a trickier proposition to review. The stand-up material was about as throwaway as Lee is ever likely to get, the ethereal music a little drone-heavy on its own but effective as background texture to the reading, which Lee executed as much as performed. It didn’t need to be much more of course, and after three nights of stand-up he was no doubt grateful for the words to do the heavy lifting on their own.

For the record, Lee’s take on Lear’s poem is both daft (the two named sailors desperately ill-equipped for maritime travel) and funny, but also a much darker - turning the base material into a tale of love and obsession, the inspiration for which he part-explained in response to a question at the finale.

I’ll not spoil that here, but will say the book - beautifully illustrated with gothic-comic art by David Waywell - is worthy of investigation, and hearing it read by its author, largely out of ‘performance’ mode, makes for a great way for admirers to while away an hour.

3 stars

Reviewed by Steve Adams at the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry on Sunday 11 October. Stewart Lee: Pea Green Boat also plays at the Midland Arts Centre on 6 February 2027.
Stewart Lee Vs the Man-Wulf plays at Birmingham Hippodrome on 18 October.