Ellen Degeneres represents the comic's triumphant return to stand-up after the cancellation of her controversial sit-com. It is a tighter set than one might expect, given the besottedness of the audience to which she is playing, and whenever she drifts into hippy-dippy New Age pieties it can be guaranteed that they will be subverted within seconds. The principal reference to her coming-out and the furore it created is an opening section in which she declines to talk about it and instead offers a hysterically funny interpretative dance version. Other highlights of the set include a prolonged meditation on what you do after zoning out in the middle of a conversation and why talking about Gloria Estefan always helps, discussions of the terrible consequences of meditation, or wanting to buy some cheese, and an account of a social interaction with God, who serves a very nice peppery Chablis. Her forté is the slightly surreal extended narrative which goes in strange directions--a bit like a cross between Victoria Wood and Eddie Izzard; Ellen Degeneres shares with both those comics a slightly worrying need to be loved.
On the DVD: the DVD comes without any features other than chapter selection; it is presented in crisp Dolby sound and a 4:3 video ratio. --Roz Kaveney
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