My first show of the Fringe! And I’ve not even started the proper Fringe trip yet. I have a decent amount of time to kill between my plane landing and Alasdair’s obscenely timed 12.30am show, and luckily Kitson slots right into that gap.
I become more engaged in this show than I could have reasonably expected. I get roped into doing a bit of tech at the end of the show - a simple blackout, but I am a mole, a supposed audience member - the prestige (yes yes very good Sam well done). But I also, off my own back, get my first experience of flyering, whilst waiting around with Kitson before the show. I do not like it, and I resent the idea that I’d have to be doing it if I ever wanted to do a proper show here. Still, I manage to give out four flyers, which I consider a success.
Kitson’s a very good club comic, and it’s great to see that in evidence here tonight. There are some lovely set piece routines that I’ve seen him develop over the last few years which have come together here. There’s maybe not as much connective throughline to them as I’d have thought, but they’re good enough to survive that.
He shines when dealing with the noise bleed from clown show in the yurt next door, which is such an Edinburgh thing to write down. Awful stuff.
For a debut hour, he’s almost there. There’s a little bit of trying to jam in the expected beats of an Edinburgh hour, and he might have been better served doing the Morgan Rees approach of just “60 minutes of jokes, I’m not trying to fool you”. But even if this isn’t quite the show he’s capable, the next one will be.