...and dates in Manchester

Daniel Kitson has announced a major two-week run of stand-up shows in London.

The show, Something Other than Everything, will be his first solo work in the capital in almost four years.

It will be at the 1,700-capacity Roundhouse in Camden from July 12 to 29 with nightly shows at 9pm and a 2.30pm matinee on Sundays. Tickets go on general sale this Friday at 10am, but to his mailing list subscribers and Roundhouse members at 10am tomorrow.

It will also be playing the Manchester Royal Exchange from August 31 to September 9.

Kitson’s shows frequently cause booking systems to go into meltdown when they are first announced, but in a message to his fans, the comedian said: ‘I will say this, there are thousands and thousands of seats. Plenty for everyone who wants one. If there are delays of difficulties when they first go on sale, bear with it… It will all be okay.’

He added: ‘I’m tremendously excited, intermittently trepidatious and generally feeling very alive about the whole thing. I’ve got some worryingly ambitious ideas which involve a skill set I don’t yet have, thoughts I’ve not yet clarified and technology I can’t yet operate but I’ve also got some pretty good stand-up comedy so we’ll get through it.’

The blurb for the show makes an analogy between his understanding of the world and a broken espresso machine he dismantled to try to get working – only for it to end up a pile of components he no longer recognises as a once-functional machine.

The Roundhouse website adds: ‘ Marooned in the middle of a circle of microphones, speakers, lights and people he will attempt to not simply dismantle and rebuild his own ideas about compassion, isolation, solidarity and progress but in doing so momentarily alter the function of language and invent a new form of stand-up comedy.’

Published: 25 Apr 2017