Daniel Kitson
Opening your Melbourne International Comedy Festival by seeing Daniel Kitson isn’t a bad way to go. He was happy to tell his audience that considering it was a preview show he didn’t have to be funny (and that we were all cheapskates). Luckily for all, Kitson was, as usual, funny as hell.
For those who have missed his previous visits, going to a Kitson show is akin to listening to that grumpy uncle at Christmas tell you all about what’s wrong with the world. Unlike your uncle, he will also tell you that the reason it’s wrong is because there isn’t enough whimsy and imagination around us. Everything from smokers to his own audiences bother Kitson, and yet he still manages to impart on the audience his yearning for a society where we don’t all fall into the trap of mainstream thinking and just grumble over the state of affairs as they stand. His frustration is tinged with an optimism for how things could be.
While Kitson was ill, he still delivered a show which kept the audience laughing constantly. Perhaps a little too constantly. As he has lamented previously, his own success has turned his shows into something he despises – people who expect a good show turn up and laugh, regardless of whether they ‘get’ what he is saying. Kitson is keen to point out, and I can’t help but agree, that you can’t keep the cunts out of any area of life. Somehow, they always intrude.
This was the first year I’ve seen Kitson, and I found him kinda abrasive. That said, bloody hilarious. Strange little man with some serious issues about the world around him.
My friends keep telling me to go see him but I haven’t been yet. I know the festival is already well and trully on but I’m just getting organised to see stuff now. I hope he doesnt sell out!
Kitson is so good! I can see how he’s kind of abrasive but isn’t that the good thing about him? I like that he is going against the grain.
Beg, borrow or steal to get a ticket. This man is one of my favourite people in the universe.
The only thing I’ll say about this is that I saw Daniel Kitson at my first comedy festival in 02 or 03 or something, and although I laughed a lot I did feel it was on a superficial level. As a supposed ‘intellectual type’ myself, Kitson’s so-called intellect didn’t seem that gargangtuan to me – I’d just say he was very, or highly intelligent, and a natural, highly gifted comic (not the god of others’ eyes though.)
All being a queer has ever meant to me was love, dancing, music and endless good times! Daniel Kitson’s remarks really marred what to me was an only pretty good show anyway. Not because I was personally hurt or upset, but because of the weakness of succumbing to such easy, crummy cracks.
In the feature rating people’s responses to a list of about 30 comics at the beginning of the final Pun of the comedy festival, some clever writer announced if you didn’t like Kitson, you were ‘a cunt.’ Oh! Well, I don’t like him because I’m gay, and he made a couple of disappointing cracks at the expense of gay folk in the show I saw. Now, don’t get me wrong, I am not a gay-a-nazi (ie gay equivalent of ‘feminazi’) and am actually extremely lazy when it comes to political activism and gay rights etc.
I was never teased for being gay at school and in fact at the end of Year 12 I got pretty frustrated and unhappy because my attempts to out myself all failed – no-one noticed!!
He should know better too, as somebody who knows only too well of what it was like to be teased at school and fucked over for being different – then he goes and takes some tedious, tiresome ‘oh, anal sex must hurt’ shots at the next most easily available minority group! So, The Pun says I am a cunt for not liking Daniel Kitson, well, I say fuck off Daniel Kitson, and he is a cunt! A price not worth paying for this shallow, clever-sounding humour anyway. So ner!!!
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