1000 Tiny Birds

Daniel Kitson - TBBYGTAWIP

The Wardrobe Theatre, 2023-03-02

“The Bit Before You Get To A Work In Progress”. Well it’s certainly that at first glance. Daniel Kitson returns to the Wardrobe, emerging on stage still set up for the night’s earlier production of Elvis In Blue Hawaii, which is quite at odds with the 90 odd minutes that are about to happen. Kitson in this form is always fascinating, the version of him that isn’t delivering a tightly scripted and structured storytelling show, but instead just seemingly winging it, endlessly distracted by the audience and revelling in just having fun. For a while, it seems convincing that he really hasn’t got anything prepared, but about 30 minutes in, he pauses and realises he forgot to set something up, and in that moment it clicks that even in this very embryonic and superficially shambolic material, he knows what he’s doing to a ridiculous degree. It’s honestly remarkable to watch, as a comic. If you ask most of us, we’d say we want to be Daniel Kitson on some level, and to know that in a year’s time, I’ll be watching a finished product with some brilliant, heartfelt, intelligent conceit and execution that derived, somehow, from all this - well, what expectations to live up to.