Daniel Kitson used to be the arch solo performer. Over the past few years, the reluctant Perrier Award-winning stand-up has morphed into an unrivalled, indeed cult, theatrical storyteller whose shows sell out dizzyingly fast.
His trademark is — or was — verbally dexterous one-man pieces underpinned by a whimsical yet unswervingly honest look at love and loneliness. Now, for his new play about (un)reliable narrators, Kitson springs a surprise: he has a partner on stage, in the shape of comic poet Tim Key.
The title isn’t wrong: this is unarguably a play about a tree; one might even call it a shaggy tree story. An astonishingly leafy arboreal model stretches up to the lofty Old Vic ceiling, and only a performer as idiosyncratic as Kitson would see fit to spend 90 minutes virtually concealed in its branches. Down below, Key’s unnamed character has arrived, nervous, besuited and early, for a picnic date. He and Kitson start chatting idly. Why, Key asks, is Kitson up the tree?
Here starts the fun, as the pair tentatively unfurl their stories, Kitson’s concerning a protest about pollarding that has inadvertently led to him living in the tree for the past nine years.
The narrative, in classic Kitson style, is stuffed full of glorious observations about the seeming mundanities of everyday life — a bus ride, a chocolate bar — that have been lovingly polished up so that every episode is now a small, sparkling gem.
Although the pair bounce cleverly off each other, the story struggles slightly to stretch to 90 minutes and the ending is somewhat peremptory. Bracing as it is to see Kitson branching out, I prefer him on his own.
Until Jan 31 (0844 871 7628, oldvictheatre.com)
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