Daniel Kitson - Keep - Battersea

I used to love Daniel Kitson and his work but the Roundhouse gigs a couple of years ago were crude, unfunny, racist, overlong and self-indulgent and has put me off seeing him again.

I'm seeing this at the end of the month - I have seen a few things online with people saying it was far too long so I'm hoping Kitson has cut it down a bit before I see this : I've enjoyed everything I've seen him do before but I'm a little bit mystified as to why people think he is one of the best stand ups going, to tell the truth.

His WIP nights upstairs at the Hob were some of the best stand up I've seen - very free range, just fishing for ideas and working a small room. So much more fun than the more intricate stuff he's been producing.
Didn't see the Roundhouse shows, think Tree was the last show we saw.

Well this made no sense

Seconding that 'this' can you second a 'this'? anyway I just have. Self indulgent particularly, and a kind of 'in-crowd-in-joke' feeling that fully put me off for a bit. 

Well that was glorious. Room for editing but I'm glad it wasn't. Two hours in his company flew by. The astonishing turn of phrase is ever present and though I can remember six or seven of my favourites there must be half a dozen more that I won't. No heckling as such but somebody sneezed at a crucial moment and he weaved it in seamlessly.

The above is the best summary of it from me as well (I wasn't referring to the racism comments in my post having actually missed that entire thing) but yes- while it's clear there's an element of self indulgence as part of the 'bit' as it were, and that's fine, after a while it has just grown a bit wearying. That and feeling like it's very much an 'in crowd' who goes to his shows, or the 'cool kids' which obviously we can all say 'f*** it' and rise above...but also life's short, there's lots to do, why bother if as an audience member it makes you feel that way? which is where I'm at now with him....maybe in a few years I'd give him another bash.

I liked this one. It was a bit meandering, very plot-light, and far too clearly constructed, but as most Kitson shows need to come together at the end before you can fairly come to a conclusion, it didn't affect my overall enjoyment in the end. It's great though, the conceit of the show is that he will literally just be reading 21,000 index cards listing the contents of his house and he was very upfront about this at the beginning in case people wanted to leave before he got going. I hope it's not a spoiler to say you shouldn't believe a word of his lies, as people *did* leave the night I went and he did *not* literally just read 21,000 index cards listing the contents of his house. Stick it out. This probably isn't the show to convert any non-believers, but if you're already a fan, it's a worthwhile use of two hours and twelve pounds.

Much as I am increasingly losing patience for people who insist on there being two equal sides in *every* argument (for instance, 97% of scientists concur that climate change is real and caused by people, there is no reason for the 3% to be given equal air time as though it's an actual debate, and yet people do), I do see both sides of the racism complaint re: the Ovalhouse show. Yes, I think he was speaking critically against racism but at the same time, it wasn't a point so integral to the piece that it even needed to be brought up in the first place, and more importantly there are other voices better positioned to actually tackle the subject than that of a straight white man. Also I suppose there are some contexts where you would say the slur itself rather than a "polite" euphemism (such as "the n-word", though do we have any "polite" verbal euphemisms for P**i?) but I'm thinking more playing a racist character in a play, or using the word in an academic paper, or a member of the group in question saying it as part of a discussion, rather than using it relatively casually in a show you yourself have written; even if you feel uncomfortable about the racism involved but are still comfortable enough to say the word, maybe because it was in such common use in the playground when you were a kid, that's still a problem.

Some thoughts on this, having now seen it. I generally find his shows enjoyable on some level even when they're not among his best work, and this was the case with Keep. It's good, but it's not up there with 66a, It's Always, Polyphony, Mouse and Tree. On the 17th it ran to 2 hours, which was too long. It could've lost 20 minutes and not suffered, and in fact given that 90 minutes always seemed to be a standard Kitson show length I don't see any reason he couldn't have limited this one to that.

Irksome though it would no doubt seem to many, I actually thought he could have been bolder with the index card concept. Having the very handsome filing cabinet as the centrepiece of the set and the story, it would have made more sense to me for there to have been more card-reading than there was, and it would also have been more in line with his penchant for oddball show concepts.

Perhaps it was a mistake to have gone to two of the work-in-progress shows as their more loose, chaotic, chatty style was somehow more enjoyable. It might also be that those shows set up the idea of the card index to more of an extent in my mind than was helpful, if that makes sense - it might've heightened my expectations. Oh well, maybe a lesson there - don't go along to the work in progress shows just because I managed to get tickets in the mad scramble. The trouble is, because he makes them so skilfully unstructured and his ad-hoc audience interactions are so damn enjoyable, the shows are usually great fun. They also don't usually tend to bear much resemblance to the finished article but this time it was closer and that threw me a bit.

This was my first time back in the BAC Grand Hall since it re-opened and I was quite moved by it. A real triumph of spirit and perseverance. Two and a half years from it being a smoking ruin to re-opening in fine fettle - not bad going at all.

I absolutely adore Kitson so will queue up (virtually) for tickets and hope for the best!

Did anyone have any luck? What a shambles!

Just got mine for next weekend.

The much-missed rush of buying tickets for a new show and putting something in the calendar