Daniel Kitson — Thrum

I first saw Daniel Kitson live about a decade ago when he was touring a show titled Tree. It was the first time in the comedian’s career that he worked with a substantial piece of set dressing, and—more than a decade later—he mentions as part of his current show, Thrum, that the giant tree is still in storage. It’s a not-insignificant monthly expenditure, he explains, to keep it there. But environmentally-responsible disposal of the tree would cost ~10 months of storage costs in one go, which has never felt like the easier choice. Somehow, Kitson manages to make the dry maths of his financial imprudence into something hilarious. It speaks to his enormous likability and his skills as a comic, but it also nods to a key component of his onstage persona: projecting a complex mix of self-assurance and self-ridicule—a “generational talent” who cannot get out of his own way. What makes it work is the extent to which Kitson is demonstrably a man of principles. One thread—of so very many at…