He is the comedian's comedian. He is respected by his peers for following his own path and not spending all of his time cultivating a shiny-floor act that will work on Live at the Apollo. He is constantly playing with the form of comedy. In his latest run in London he does something performance-wise that has not been done before.

Sounds a lot like Daniel Kitson only communicating via pre-recorded tapes in Analog.Ue doesn't it? But this time I was thinking about Simon Munnery who brings his show, Fylm, to the Leicester Square Theatre from March 11, in which he performs live, but from a mixing desk in the stalls. I saw Daniel Kitson's latest show at the National Theatre the other week and it had been preying on my mind ever since. Then when I thought about Munnery today some thoughts started to click into place. I'm all for comedians playing with forms, but while Munnery adds something with his new style, Kitson is diminished by his. 

Kitson's show has received probably the most diverse reviews of his career to date. Rather than across-the-board 4/5 stars he received five stars from The Telegraph but only 2 stars from The Times and on London Is Funny. I gave the show a qualifed four stars in the Evening Standard. You can read my review here.

I can see why Analog.Ue divided the critics. It is both Kitson's best and worst show to date. I'd seen him a couple of weeks earlier compering the Resofit benefit at the Bloomsbury and despite the fact that his brain was a bit frazzled (partly because of some sushi, partly because he had been in a room alone all day putting Analog.Ue together) he was at his peerless best bantering with the audience or just freewheeling and flinging out ideas on the hoof.

Yet this is exactly what he cannot do in Analog.Ue. As you may well known by now, the 90-minute performance is all pre-recorded on tape, so this comedian, who thinks so well on his feet, never actually has the opportunity to think on his feet. Even when there was a minor technical glitch during the performance I was at, there was no scope for a smart Kapow-style one-liner to smooth over the wrinkles, he just continued regardless.

There was also the problem that for someone who has pretty much perfect comic timing, the fact that the occasional gags were pre-recorded meant that the rippling laughs drowned out the next few serious lines. Though maybe Kitson has corrected this by now – maybe he underestimated quite how funny his gags or judicious use on the word "cunt" on the Lyttelton stage would be. 

It is noticeable to me that the people who gave Kitson the most lukewarm reviews, Paul Fleckney on London is Funny and Dominic Maxwell in the Times, have probably seen him more times than most, so are certainly well-placed to put this show into context. Analog.Ue is a fascinating piece of entry-level Kitson for theatre-goers not au fait with his oeuvre. But for Kitson veterans he was starting to circle around some very familiar themes – the elderly, romance, randomness, ordinary yet magical lives.

He pretty much got a ovation from the full house. They were very much a regular theatre audience, many quite elderly (it was a morning show, maybe the evenings attract more of the hipsters Kitson probably despises). They had no doubt snapped up their tickets sight-unseen when they went on sale via the NT mailing list and they probably appreciated the nods to Beckett and Bennett. But we should remember that Kitson is no newbie, he is closer to forty than thirty now so maybe should be emerging more from the shadows of his theatrical heroes (if, indeed B & B are his heroes - he has done so few interviews in recent years I can't recall him giving them any namechecks)

But seasoned Kitson aficionados will know that he can be better than this. We don't particularly want him to be doing his potty-mouthed Late & Live at the Gilded Balloon style slam-downs every night, but I'd like to see him using an art-form that allows him to utilise his intellectual ambition, but that also gives him the freedom to indulge in his quickfire verbal acuity. I think an art-form like this already exists. It is called stand-up comedy.