CityLife

Royal approval for new Kitson show

BUSY BEE: Kitson

IT’S gearing up to be a busy old year for CityLife fav Daniel Kitson.

In fact the much-loved stand-up and comic actor will be something of a theatre plate spinner in 2009 with several shows lined up to take the stage across the world.

By the time his latest stand-up jaunt, the philosophically entitled We Are Gathered Here, arrives at his favourite Manc venue, the Royal Exchange this November, the Denby Dale-born star will have performed… deep breath… his new one-man play, The Interminable Suicide of Gregory Church, in London and at the Fringe festival in Edinburgh, while having also taken We Are Gathered Here to New York and across Australia.

And, if you thought he’d park his size nines on the sofa once his 19-date UK tour was wrapped up, think again as Kitson is also planning to head back Down Under for further performances of last year’s acclaimed 66A Church Road one-hander.

So what’s We Are Gathered Here all about then? Daniel, it’s over to you:

“Everyone you have ever known will die. And so will you. And yet we dance in the looming shadows of mortality, we dance and we talk and we eat and we argue. We read books. We care for people. We buy houses.

Frothy

“We plant trees and we start to drive and we learn how to make milk frothy. Because something, somewhere in the middle of it all has to matter. As our seconds and minutes and days slip by, something has to be important.

“And who are we to giggle and point and sneer at what others have found to care about? Who is to say what is beneath us, what is not worthy of our hearts?

“Everybody needs something to hold when it gets dark, so who am I, who are any of us, to point at anything and call it facile or redundant or stupid or rubbish?

“Even when it quite clearly is.”

So all clear then.

Always thought-provoking, reliably hilarious and down right endearing, Kitson was last in CityLife’s midst prior to Edinburgh in 2008 with his thoroughly engaging paean to his London flat, 66A Church Road.

His latest project ‘about finding something important in an ocean of twaddle’, promises more jewels.

Daniel Kitson plays the Royal Exchange on Sunday, November 15. £10, £12. Call 0161 833 9833 for tickets.