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Nearly everything Daniel Kitson says in the fumbly, bumbly beginning ofKeepis a big fib.
Seemingly improvised asides turn out to be core principles; doubts turn out to be certainties.
But behind his woolly beard and unthreatening sweater, hes a laser-focused master craftsman.
Theres a card catalogue onstage thats a head taller than he is.
It feels like something we can dounderstand a person through the cloud of satellite detritus that surrounds him.
And Kitson, for all his many monologues, still has the glamour of an opaque personality.
I have been listening to him for years, and Im still dying to know where the truth begins.
What does that tell us?
Is he a hoarder?
As Kitson reads the cards, he lets us snoop vicariously around his home.
He drops kernels of wisdom about memory and regret; he also keeps wandering off topic.
Everything in the audience throws him for a loop.
Our ears cock forwardwhat isheconfessing to?
Does it have to do with the emptiness of the house, the fact that he lives there alone?
But the sadness in his work is what makes it addictive.
He hints again and again that he has caused himself and others pain.
but is actually a window into another fiction.
His honesty snaps shut like a trap on your hand.
This box, like Pandoras, is full of pain.
Itmightbe Kitsons, certainly.
Maybe each delicate implication about how rueful he feels is true.
But it doesnt matter.
What a diagnostician he is, I thought, as the pin went into my little butterfly spine.
It made me positively wriggle with pleasure to hear a hard truth.
But then, thats just the kind of person I am.
Keepis at St. Anns Warehouse through December 19.
