Russell Brand to present 'funny and profane' 12-step guide to sobriety, 'Recovery Live,' in San Diego

Russell Brand to present ‘funny and profane’ 12-step guide to sobriety, ‘Recovery Live,’ in San Diego

Are the English actor and comedian’s San Diego fans ready for an evening of serious 12-step humor? We’ll find out Wednesday at the Lyceum Theatre

San Diego Union-Tribune

Feb. 15, 2020 6:14 PM PT

Few people describe English comedian and actor Russell Brand as having a serious, sobering presence, including Brand himself.

But his current tour, which stops Wednesday at the Lyceum Theatre, should provide much more than bawdy laughs.

Get ready for: “A funny and profane exploration into personal development and wellness from a comedian who has dedicated himself to spirituality to avoid self-destruction. This 90-minute experience will introduce you to the system that saved his life, continues to save his sanity and will work for anyone who is willing to commit to it.”

Brand, the former husband of pop vocal star Katy Perry, is now 17 years clean and sober. He chronicles the 12-step program that saved his life in his 2017 book, “Recovery: Freedom from our Addictions.”

His current tour is, in his words: “A program for living for those aspiring to be saints who have lived too long among demons. This is an alternative vision for life at a time devoid of real values and connection. This could be the thing you have been looking for and it’s weird that this is the way you’re going to find it.”

This won’t be Brand’s first time in San Diego, as he notes in a recent video on his Twitter page.

“I went there, funnily enough, to meet Kristen Bell to audition for (the 2008 movie) ‘Forgetting Sarah Marshall’,” he says in the video.

“It went well for me that time. I’ve been there, visited military bases, on other occasions and I know you good people of San Diego to be the chosen folk of the West Coast...”

Russell Brand 7:30 p.m. Wednesday. Lyceum Theatre, 79 Horton Plaza, Gaslamp Quarter. $49.50. (619) 544-1000. sdrep.org

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George Varga

San Diego Union-Tribune music critic George Varga began drumming in rock bands at 12 and writing professionally about music at 15. A Louisiana native who grew up mostly in Germany, Varga has earned three Pulitzer Prize nominations for his writing at the U-T and is a voting member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In addition to providing live coverage of the Grammy Awards and festivals from Coachella and KAABOO to the 1994 edition of Woodstock, he has interviewed everyone from Miles Davis, Britney Spears and (over a game of chess) Ray Charles to Willie Nelson, Kanye West and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Anthony Davis. A triple first prize-winner for criticism and arts writing at the 2022 San Diego Press Club awards and a double first prize-winner at the 2022 San Diego Society of Professional Journalists awards, Varga is also a contributing writer for Jazz Times magazine and has written for Billboard, Spin and other publications. After attending San Diego City College and San Diego State University, he created and taught the 2002 UC San Diego Extension course, “Jazz in a Post-Ken-Burns World.” Varga has written liner notes for more than a dozen albums, including by jazz sax greats James Moody and Michael Brecker, and contributed two chapters to the book, “Dylan: Disc By Disc.”