*****

This picture here is not from the show. It’s what I saw at the entrance to Summerhall. And there was a big queue behind this fan too, all hoping for a spare ticket so that they could sneak into Daniel Kitson’s latest piece of meta-theatre. There were no press tickets issued either, but I was lucky enough to be offered one via a friend. I grabbed it with both hands and held it tightly.

The set-up is both complex and simple. Kitson hands out fifteen pre-recorded iPods to members of the audience and then spends the next hour and a bit interacting with the fifteen different voices coming out of the speakers. It’s a masterful performance but one that also acts as a metaphor for Kitson himself. He is absolutely in control. Nobody speaks unless he allows them. 

Polyphony finds Kitson revisiting old themes and, boy, does he know it, mocking his style even as he employs it to excellent effect. Polyphony is very much Kitson having his cake and scoffing it. One of the pre-recorded sections worries that this is going to be another sentimental piece about an old man from the north. It is, and of course, it isn’t. He's in south London. One of the twists is that it is set 40 years in the future and the old man has stumbled across some now-antiquated iPods which he settles down to play back.

There is even a hint at why the bearded boy wonder doesn’t like critics - maybe all they do is say what happens, which he calls reductive. “What happens in the Mona Lisa?” he asked. Kitson is also painfully aware that his fans know his tics backwards. Another of the voices admonishes him for recycling his usual tropes including swearing and using elaborate language. Kitson’s badinage has the perfect riposte for this.

While there are serious themes hear and also echoes of writers from Pirandello to Beckett (Krapp’s Last iPod, anyone?) it’s the inspired verbiage and the comedy that keeps you hooked. It has a brutal message in there along the way though. Kitson’s view of romance and relationships comes across as strangely bleak. We will always lose touch with friends however much they mean to us. Relationships, however successful, will end in death and sadness. Romance is transient. Little more than kicking a can down the road.

This show must surely be a potential technical nightmare, but after an initial hitch it seemed to run smoothly the day I was in. I was worried that the pre-records would mean that the audience might be laughing over the dialogue, but somehow Kitson knows his work and his audience so well he has taken this into account and the timing works almost perfectly. 

In fact everything about this is pretty perfect. Being reductive about Polyphony I have to say that I laughed more than at his last show Tree, so it must be better. Kitson is charmingly funny and some praise is due to the people who provided voices - I’m pretty sure I heard his Tree co-star Tim Key, Alun Cochrane, Isy Suttie, Elis James among them, though couldn’t find a cast list. But then you have to remember that this is a Kitson show. He has to have the last word.

More reviews here.

Until Aug 30. Tickets here, though I don't really know why I'm putting this link as they all went ages ago. Get yourselves a sign instead.