Keep

Out of the 192 blogs I’ve written, this is my 6^th one on Daniel Kitson. He is the one artist I’ve travelled to see. A few years ago, I went to Liverpool to see Mouse: The Persistence Of An Unlikely Thought, and routinely go to Edinburgh, with the primary motive of seeing him. I’ve watched him at midday in Polyphony and at midnight in Stories For The Starlit Sky. There isn’t a time, date and place I wouldn’t go to watch Daniel Kitson. (I should qualify this: I’m getting married at 1.30pm on 13^th April in Knebworth – if he has a gig that clashes with this, then I’m choosing the wife. Should he have a gig later that evening, then maybe I can slip out after the first dance and be back for a Take That ‘Never Forget’ sing-a-long. Yes, I’m aware Gary Barlow dodged his taxes and should therefore be persona non grata, but the tune is perfect for a dancefloor, and I can’t let celebrity behaviour inform the playlist, otherwise our disco will just consist of David Attenborough voice-over.

This was an outstanding show.

So I love Daniel Kitson. I love his way with language. I love how he can mix it up, being poetic one minute, profane the next. I love how he treats his fans with mock-disdain. I love how he looks after his fans, keeping prices down. I love how whenever I see him it's a new venue: Regents Park, New Players, The National, Old Vic, Camden Roundhouse, Battersea Arts Centre. I love his ambition. When he won the main Edinburgh award in 2002 he had a decision to make: become a blockbuster name or an independent auteur. He chose the latter because it gave him creative control. In the last few years he’s experimented with analogue and digital technology, lighting and staging, to do something innovative and interesting with comedy. It hasn’t always been a 100% successful. His show Analog.Ue involved him moving from reel-reel players to tell a story, everything was told through the technology, which meant we didn’t hear his live voice once – like watching Audible. Last year Something Other Than Everything used different lighting to signpost different narrative strands – it didn’t successfully enhance the story. But the reason why I love him is because he’s the greatest and- like Ali- the only thing left for him to do is shadow box against himself. He could just deliver the tried and tested; the formula that made him a 5 star concern - deconstruction, whimsy, callback- but instead he attempts to surpass himself by being brave and bold in his decisions.

His new show Keep is housed at Battersea Arts Centre, which has not long reopened after a fire in 2015. As part of their Phoenix Season, celebrating the venue’s rebirth, Kitson has a month- long residency. The show begins with a warning. We’re given the premise of the show. That the filing cabinet we see on stage contains a list of every item in his house. There are thousands of items – it could be a challenging evening; if we’re not up for it then we’re welcome to leave now – a full refund, no questions asked. Now, the man is a rascal: there’s every chance he’s lying. In three of his shows, Tree, Mouse and Polyphony he’s proved an unreliable narrator. However, he's also a man that chooses a mailing list as his sole medium of communication, one who has no physical merchandise and a person whom charges £12 for shows worth treble: in other words, he’s willfully perverse – if he’s going to read the phone book, then I guess I'll sit and enjoy it.

A phoenix rising from the ashes. (All pics. from here are courtesy of The Girl.)

Returning to stage, he notices a phone has been left on the table. He’s annoyed. There’s a Wes Anderson fastidiousness to his set design; he’s annoyed that his retro frame has been hijacked by millennial tech. Or is this the start of him messing with us? Soon, he explains the drawers: how they correspond to different rooms in the house- of course there’s more for some rooms than others. He begins at the bottom with the garden. Soon he's reading out 'plant pot,' prefaced by a multitude of materials and then its ‘brick,’ ‘brick,’ ‘brick,’ ‘brick.’ The repetition of the humdrum is hilarious coming out of his mouth. If we are to watch a show where he shares his inventory, then I'm at least sure that the arrangement of words will be done in such a way to elicit laughs.

Soon though the artifice comes to the fore. A card about someone crying on a train is contained in his garden archive. It shouldn’t be there. He reasons to us how it must have got in there by mistake. An old story idea perhaps. It shan’t happen again. (Yeah right, Dan. We see what you’re cooking here.) He continues and notices another card. He’s not happy. He wouldn't have made that mistake twice. Has someone been tampering with his props? Kitson is the horologist of comedy: his jokes run to clockwork, his rhythm runs to time, yet someone has broken in, messed with the mechanism, thrown him out of sync. If comedy is timing, then this act of vandalism threatens to derail the night. He picks up his phone and calls the venue manager: she’s not there; he leaves a message. The phone is Chekov’s gun: we know he’ll pick it up later.

Kitson soldiers on, going through the rooms of his house. He’s aware doing this show in London might seem vainglorious. Most Londoners live in the eternal purgatory of rent, landlords and shared living. He has multiple bedrooms and is the sole occupant. He explains how he forgets his privilege. Privilege he explains is like wearing a Christmas hat: ‘easy to forget it’s there, but embarrassingly obvious to those around you.’ This is Kitson’s genius. No one in comedy can write like him. When it comes to analogy, metaphor and repetition he can’t be rivalled. As we go through the drawers, he breaks from the listing, using the items as launchpads for routines. The jam jars that his mum brought round are all empty. Empty of content, but full of potential. "With those JJ’s he plans to make chutz." Lots of yum yum chutney. His idiolect is entirely idiosyncratic, a combination of romantic poetry, hip hop boasts and self-conscious baby talk. He borrows and pilfers from all cultures to create a language that's entirely his own.

The filing cabinet in question with the drawers pulled out.

The richness in his language runs throughout. When he goes on to the bathroom, he defines toilet readers as ‘dirty piglets.’ The people who own and don’t use typewriters aren’t quite ‘Captain Cunt,’ but they are ‘Deputy Dickhead.’ (Shamefully, I fall into both categories.) But it’s not just everyday behaviours he mocks, he challenges the bigger lies we tell ourselves. There’s a lovely routine on virtue-signaling, on how people make a gold star out of the naughty step: “The thing is with me…,” “My main problem is …” and “I might have been …, but I never ...” All of these sentence starters and volte-faces demonstrate how we’re not unable to take responsibility. Your main problem isn’t that you’re too nice, it’s that you haven’t got the courage to risk being disliked. Your main problem isn’t that you’re a perfectionist, it’s that you’re a narcissist. You may never have drunk at work, but you still got drunk around your children, making you an arsehole. Kitson notices the lies he tells himself, so too the lies in others.

As we go deeper into the drawers, Kitson puts the incorrect cards on the table. A number of cards begin to gather: some with words, others with punctuation- is something beginning to emerge here? For me, this ending doesn’t quite work. To move from one form of narrative to another jolted towards the end. I had become so accustomed to the rhythms of the main story that to have another introduced messed with my head, making it difficult to focus. With the first ‘mistaken’ card, Kitson commented: “It’s better for something to go wrong in the first five minutes than the last.” These words felt prophetic, as for me the ending was anti-climactic.



The 'misplaced' cards.

Critics, on the other hand, have criticized the show for being too long. I don’t think this is an issue. I thought it was Kitson’s best since Polyphony. If anything, the ending felt rushed. But when it comes down to it, I’m at an age where I’d rather see someone miss an overhead kick than score a tap in. Because when it comes to language, laughs and staging, Kitson is in a league of his own. His desire to try something new is so refreshing in a world where commercial pressures mean people have to play safe and get the job done. In the preamble he conceded the show was challenging, and in some respects he's right: two hours with no break, listening to one man stand-up-theatre isn't the search result you'd get if you typed 'Saturday Night' into Google. However, shouldn’t we be challenged? Shouldn’t we stretch our brains a little and not let arthritis set in.

So not every minute works. So what? The ones that do are a wonder. Better to open something meaningful than a shit present well wrapped. I guess what I’m saying is ‘I still love Daniel Kitson.’

Keep is being performed in Battersea Arts Centre until 31st January

(If you like, scroll through my old blogs to look at previous reviews of Kitson's work.)