Daniel Kitson has built a career on berating the dross for obscuring the diamonds. He's only cynical because life seems so unromantic. This year, the Perrier champ has cast aside stand-up, and instead tells us a nocturnal love story that dramatises the tension between spite and saccharine. It stars Dora, her magic apples and a man called Beth who saves her when she collides with the postman. It's underscored by fuzzy film sequences and spangly music. It's like Our Tune meets Haruki Murakami. In a tent.
Hats off to Kitson for this brave change in direction. But A Made-up Story doesn't really work. Plenty of Kitson trademarks here: the underdog's fury at other people's needless obnoxiousness, the cheerfully poetic turn of phrase. Dora's nemesis strides towards her, "his walk full of pompous postman purpose". Love strikes Beth "like a wasp sting wrapped in a fist".
But Kitson is caught in a no-man's-land between stand-up and book-reading. The story unfolds painfully slowly because Kitson the comedian over-editorialises. But Kitson the comedian can't cut loose (and there are few finer extemporisers on the circuit) because he has to stick, albeit loosely, to the script. It cramps his style. Most frustratingly, Kitson overblows his affection for normal people's idiosyncracies into sugary sweetness. He scorns mainstream romantic cliche, but his own story rehashes standards from the realms of magic realism and dweeb wish-fulfilment.
One's excitement at Kitson's new departure cedes to disappointment that, so far, it's leading up a blind alley.
