Tuesday 20 March 2012

Spoiler Alert! Daniel Kitson previews Edinburgh show

Reasons I Love Leicester, Number 47: I've been able to see stand-ups of the quality of Stewart Lee and Daniel Kitson within a week of each other, both within a couple of miles of where I eat, sleep and poo... AND Doug Stanhope's coming up very soon... AND it's not even Comedy Festival season any more! This city is clearly a hotspot for quality comedy right now, and Mr Kitson obviously felt as many others do, that Leicester was a good place to test out his latest Edinburgh Festival show, which he did to a very appreciative Just the Tonic audience last night.
This was something of a mock exam for his new show, and Kitson clearly needed to be able to concentrate to get through the entire 2-hour show without an interval. He brought notes with him which he referred to infrequently, stammered more during sections of the show he was less comfortable with and did not tolerate distractions from the audience. Hence the bar was closed during the performance and latecomers were warned in advance that they would not be admitted.
If all of this sounds like the opposite of a good time, it was more than balanced out by the quality of the material, and by the fact that you were seeing one of stand-up's greatest talents up close, in your home town, for a fiver. It would have been £12 according to Kitson, but there was no trademark life-affirming story arc to this show - it was more like a series of amusing musings on the nature of life, love and beards, delivered with a contrasting mixture of eye-opening insght, self-deprecating honesty and occasional feigned arrogance.
The opening section addressed his drastic change of appearance - freshly shorn of hair and beard, he explained how he was becoming too easily categorisable by his appearance (glasses and a beard - you must own a micro-brewery!). He also railed against the current comedy boom (don't hold your breath for a DVD release any time soon) and celebrated acts of defiance and those who swim against the current in all walks of life.
As it went on, the show became more anecdotal, as Kitson shared with us stories of unrequited love and pig-decapitation amongst other things. The themes of the night were loosely tied together at the end of the show, but not in a terribly satisfactory way - one senses he'll be doing some work on the ending before taking the show to Edinburgh in August.
All in all though, it was a very enjoyable two hours spent in the company of a master of his craft. It's difficult not to admire his intelligence and invention, and it's difficult not to respect the way he stays true to his art and refuses to let himself become popular, mainstream or commodified. True, the show in its current form was was rough and unfinished, but I for one will be seeking out the finished article if I make it up to Edinburgh this year.

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