This is the perfect show for insomniacs, otherwise known as ‘Daniel Kitson’s secret late night show at Trades hall’, its gradually becoming not-so-secret. I’m slightly loathe to promote it myself as there is a risk that it might become too popular and veer away from it’s daggy, relaxed charm.
The show felt like hanging out in Daniel Kitson’s lounge room with a few of his mates over, mucking around for our own entertainment. Daniel had to rush over from his big Athenaeum show, so I was not surprised that proceedings didn’t actually commence’ til around 12.30am and they went on until about 2.30am, so be warned, it’s a two hour show with an interval (though it was the first week and they were considering dropping the interval). Daniel welcomed and treated the 20 or so of us like guests in his home. It was soon realised he didn’t have a cord that connected their laptop to the big screen. So with our encouragement, the PowerPoint intro for the show was played on the laptop on Daniel’s lap, with us huddled around, while David O’Doherty read out the small text to us.
As well as David O’Doherty the other Honourable Man of Art that night was Andy Zaltzman and both of them began sitting at the back, in each corner of the audience, adding amusing comments to Daniel’s description of the night to come. Decisions about the order of events and so on were made at this time and though this show was done in Edinburgh and they all had a fair idea of what was happening, there was also an exciting sense that any craziness might develop with these guys and that we were welcome to give input. It was interesting how effortless these seasoned performers were at entertaining an audience and at finding laughs in the strangest places, when earlier that night I’d seen a show where performers struggled to get a whiff of a giggle from a script they’d obviously put a lot of wasted hours into.
After the evening’s structure was quickly organised, Daniel read out one of his lovely postcards to the 3MMM Breakfasters that he’d previously sent from England that they had broadcast. David sang and told us the interesting fact of the day and then Andy surprised everyone by challenging him with an interesting lie for the day. Goaded by Daniel, David and Andy both had jibes at each other’s partners.
There was an interval during which Daniel taxied to his hotel to get the cord. The second half included Andy attempting a world record length joke, then posing as an oracle to answer philosophical questions then finally and in the most strangely compelling segment of all, the entire room formed a team to play Boggle on line. Gosh it was addictive. I could easily see how we could have hung out there, boggling til dawn.
This is was a lovely idea for people who don’t want to go home and enjoy hanging out with some silly people for a couple of hours in the middle of the night. It’s also a bit of a respite from the conveyor belt of 1 hour themed Festival showed that you are herded in and out of. You feel like you’ve been part of an interesting little club and its quite cheap too!
The Honourable Men of Art (Without Alun Cochrane) happens on Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday night. “See Comedy at Trades for booking details.