There is so much to love about the latest theatre piece from Daniel Kitson, a wry, vastly entertaining and moving meditation on loneliness, solitude, missing voices, and lost selves that it seems a pity not to sing it loudly from the rooftops. Even though he seems rather shy about it and isn’t issuing press tickets: I bought mine.
Just because a show is sold out doesn’t mean that it should not be part of a critical conversation, particularly as each piece made by Kitson is a continuum, and this show speaks not just to the future but also fascinatingly to the theatrical past. Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape casts a shadow over this show, and sometimes it is in the shadows that you find the most interesting and delicate things.
The conceit is simple and yet cunningly crafted. Kitson is putting on a play about an elderly man who is putting on a play using some old iPod Shuffles that he found buried in a cupboard at home. Only we never get to the play, because when Kitson hands out the 15 iPods and attached speakers to members of the audience who, by pressing the play button are effectively performing by proxy, mayhem breaks out. From all over the auditorium objections are raised that words are being put into the audiences’ mouths, and they are not being allowed to speak for themselves. Soon there are accusations that Kitson just writes the same show.
It’s brilliantly funny, playing neatly on Kitson’s Eeyore-ish personality, and he smartly stage-manages the back-and-forth dialogue with the recorded voices. In some ways it’s like hearing all the voices – both doubting and consoling – an artist has in their head when they are making a show. Or indeed that all of us have as we go about our daily lives, oblivious to the way the past impacts on the future, yet babbling on until the off switch is flicked and we are silenced forever.
- At Summerhall, Edinburgh, until 30 August. Box office: 0131-226 0000.
