Type and hit ENTER

Commonly used tags...

Brighton Festival Brighton Fringe Brighton Pride British Sea Power Cinecity Lewes Psychedelic Festival Locally Sourced Lost & Found Love Supreme Festival Nick Cave Poets Vs MCs Politics Rag'n'Bone Man Record Store Day Save Our Venues Six Of The Best Source Virgins Streets Of Brighton Street Source Tattoos The Great Escape Tru Thoughts Unsung Heroes
  • Home
  • News
  • Previews
  • Reviews
  • Features
  • Food
  • Tickets
  • Contact
  • Contribute
  • Advertise
  • Home
  • News
  • Previews
  • Reviews
  • Features
  • Food
  • Tickets
  • Contact
    • Contact
    • Contribute
    • Advertise
A photo of Tim Key who performed at Brighton Dome with Daniel Kitson
A photo of Tim Key who performed at Brighton Dome with Daniel Kitson
Reviews

Live at Brighton Dome Review

Feb 12, 2018
-
Posted by Ben Miller

“Bellends, one after the other,” Daniel Kitson casually remarks of this evening’s line-up, before wondering out loud whether the space in front of the Dome stage wouldn’t be better were it a ball pit. Kitson appearances tend to be precisely timed pieces of theatre these days, in which any audience member making a sound risks scorn for imperilling the storytelling. So a chance to see his stand-up is both a treat and an opportunity to witness him cut somewhat loose, even if everything he does seems laser-crafted in its often-spectacular use of language and tone.

It’s also something of a secret: Kitson’s gigs traditionally cause ticketing sites to crash, but Show and Tell’s night – the first of an occasional series – enlisted Kitson as a late compere. “You get yourselves in, you get yourselves comfy and then we’ll really crank this f***party into hyperdrive,” he tells the theatre, before he abandons an outline of the house rules on account of his stutter (“often my most judicious editor”). Then he breaks off into a five-second song about his stomach, mercilessly ribs a heckler and derides a public display of affection as a harrowing indictment of the modern world.

You could easily watch Kitson, in the role of warmly daft host and forensic analyst of lurking absurdities, for several hours. But he’s here as chief foil to one of his co-passengers in the car down, Tim Key. Kitson, heroically, mocks Key for his ubiquitous voiceovers on television adverts, and the pair share a genius for the dramatic, having once shared the stage on Tree, an inspired play based around a treehouse. But Key is the strictly performative of the pair tonight. “I’ve got 70 of these,” he wearily warns, as the mournful, canned violin strings which play throughout his preposterous poems begin.

An imagined couple who serve cereal at their wedding receive the curtest of shrift. Everyman fodder about his dad’s struggles with technology turns into a loud, dark rant. He rattles off a succession of observational comedy clichés gone possessed, furiously hams up the hyperbolic (a book is “blowing his mind”, the mundane is “amazing”), and interjects with ashes being sprinkled on spaghetti. Like Kitson, he makes lucid his frequent sense of disconnection from society, and there are echoes of his work on the horrors of dating and loneliness. It’s bewilderingly fierce and hangs by a thread of perfect timing, and the 25-minute headline slot flies past, a flurry of farcical ideas, cynical outbursts and dreadful punchlines.

Brighton Dome, Saturday 3rd February 2018
Words by Ben Miller

Feb 12, 2018
Email
Ben Miller
Ben Miller is a SOURCE feature writer and reporter.
← PREVIOUS POST
Keep Fabrica
NEXT POST →
Angry Girls Zine Launch, Sun 11th March
Mailing List

Recent Posts
  • Two Decades Of Funk Fire With Jalapeno Records
    Jan 18, 2021

    A new compilation celebrates 20 years of funk and soul from world-renowned Brighton label Jalapeno Records.

  • Hansel and Gretel? | Brighton Source
    Hansel and Gretel? Review
    Dec 18, 2020

    A postmodern pantomime with an unrelaible narrator. Outdoors with comedy, dance, camp actors, plenty of fun. On two levels: laughs for kids and jokes for adults

  • Artists Open Houses 2020
    Dec 5, 2020

    After cancelling the May edition, Artists Open Houses tell us what it's like to be back with a December festival that is open to visitors in person for eight days.

  • Cinecity 2020 previewed by Brighton Source
    Cinecity 2020
    Nov 17, 2020

    From the North Laine to Mongolia, Cinecity's lineup is typically eclectic and original this year - catch it before the city's key film festival ends.

  • Macbeth Review
    Nov 2, 2020

    Macbeth in Brighton. One-act play with Scottish Gaelic sounds by This Is My Theatre. Power, ambition, murder, blood. The woods are moving.

  • Lost & Found: Poison Girls
    Nov 2, 2020

    As part of our retrospective series on local bands we look back at the hugely influential and ever-challenging anarcho-punk collective Poison Girls.

  • The Rose Hill | Brighton Source
    Save Our Venues – The Rose Hill
    Oct 26, 2020

    We spoke to the team at the Rose Hill to find out how a series of new creative projects is helping this unique Brighton venue to cope with the current crisis.

  • Spillage! Review
    Oct 19, 2020

    This one-person, one-act play is giddy, funny and seriously entertaining. An odyssey through the madness of corporate pressure on our mental health.

Website developed in Brighton by Infobo
Copyright © Brighton Source 2009-2020
Live at Brighton Dome Review - Brighton Source