IF SOMEONE tells you to go and see a show featuring a boy character called Beth, a suicidal maniac and a bag of bruised apples, performed in a tent by a man who looks like he’s taken time out working a gas station forecourt in Arizona, then you’d be forgiven for saying: “Don’t be a fool. My time is precious and, anyway, Terminator 3 has just opened.”
You would, however, have missed the cracking new show from Daniel Kitson, last year’s Perrier winner, in which his imagination doesn’t just run riot, it burns down the city with a single match.
Kitson has wowed the Edinburgh Fringe two years running, first with a tale about loss of innocence and then, last year, with his winning show Something, in which he skitted between impro and a brilliant, if almost cynical, script. After his Perrier win, he looked set to become, in part, the Victor Meldrew of comedy — if Meldrew hadn’t already bagged that job.
Instead, he’s gone all soft. Not in the head but in the heart, with a knowing urban folk tale which jumps between ironic storytelling parody and sincere love story.
The anti-heroine is Dora, a plain-looking, nocturnal, textbook outsider who makes a journey of self-discovery, not backpacking in India but walking around South London in the dark. A cack-handed moment at a market stall inadvertently turns her into a “benevolent prankster”. She sees it as her task to dish out the sackfuls of bruised apples she was forced to buy. Along the way, as is the fashion with pilgrimages, she meets an old man (“his blue eyes shimmering”) who tells her about his abusive relationship with a bus driver. Then, along the path, she bumps into a postman which forces her to meet Beth, the boy who may or may not change her life. It includes the most perfectly penned scene describing failed suicide and, eventually, death by fruit.
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Performed in the round of the new movable venue The Pod, with snazzy audiovisuals, this is not the usual Kitson stand-up. No, this is more theatre than regular festival comedy: storytelling with jokes. But does it work? Well, his die-hard stand-up fans may get a shock. But then Kitson has never been one to toe the line when he can stomp on it.
This is a brave, well-constructed show with stinging acid touches and heart-screwing moments, which reveals that, as well as being a consummate teller of tales, Kitson is a ferocious writing talent.
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