Showing @ Traverse 19 & 20 May – Run Ended

Defiantly climbing into a loft that his estate agent’s warned him not to enter, Daniel Kitson finds what appears to be a suicide note, still sitting ominously in the typewriter that wrote it. Consumed by curiosity, Kitson has the entire collection of over 37,000 letters brought to his home where he systematically reads every single one in chronological order – a task that takes him two years.

Written by the house’s previous owner, Gregory Church, who is assumed to have committed suicide in 2007, the letters start with 57 suicide notes in 1983. Having received responses to his letters before he’s had a chance to finish his long suicide list, Kitson explores Gregory’s highs, lows and blossoming relationships as his suicide is postponed for nearly 25 years and the questions surrounding his death are finally resolved. Full to the brim with comedy yet sympathy for poor Gregory’s plight, there is a clever balance of emotions as well as mystery, carefully pieced together by Kitson like a detective in Poirot-like climax as he rapidly finishes the jigsaw.

Kitson is a stand-up comic by trade which is clear by the nature of the performance; he is a lone performer against a bare set with occasional improvisations taking him momentarily off topic. But the real gem here, and no doubt the reason for the show’s 2009 Fringe First Award, is Kitson’s enthralling talent for storytelling. None of the elaborate tale he weaves is true, and yet his characters are so endearing and their relationships brought to life so convincingly that the imagined possibility that Kitson’s own life would become as thoroughly entwined with Gregory’s as he claims feels impossible to deny. This is a unique new direction for performance in this combination of stand-up, storytelling and theatre, and makes Kitson yet another Traverse act to watch out for.