Stories For The Starlit Sky
I wangled a last minute ticket for Stories For The Starlit Sky, Daniel Kitson and Gavin Osborn's tome trilogy at Battersea Arts Centre on Monday night. The shows were originally written for three Regents Park Theatre dates in 2009, revived for a 2015 tour and currently being worked on again ahead of an imminent Melbourne Comedy Festival run.
It's basically three individual but linked tales all occuring in the night time. Kitson provides the prose, Osborn the musical interludes. The first, a fun "story within a story" about a group of retired assassins told by a father desperate to get his inquisitive son to go to sleep is probably the most fun and includes the delightful phrase "Hot Chocolate O Clockolate" and repeated musings on a character with deformed hands from "YEARS OF PUNCHING PEOPLE TO DEATH". It's a loose theme that allows Osborn to muse on magical happenings in the early hours including the lovely "Albert Went Out To See Rock Bands" about a gig goer of pensionable age.
The second concerns a man who follows a woman through the night to return a pen she left on a petrol station forecourt. This story never quite escapes the creepiness of its premise despite Kitson's awareness of this fact and it's the weakest of the three. The third selects a more fanciful theme of an administrative centre for love, where Osborn sings about the events filed away by the two protagonists. In between the warm, amusing dialogue, the two riff off each other beautifully, particularly on the subject of what to alter certain references to for an antipodean audience. Though replacing "Walnut Whip" with "Vegemite" feels like pandering to me.
Anyone familiar with Kitson's ouvre will recognise the touchstones here, elderly men, cakes, hot beverages, big ludicrous gestures and the quiet dignity of unrequited love. An evening listening to him in any form is invariably a delight whilst I've long been a fan of Osborn's quietly charming ditties. Australia is in for a treat.
It's basically three individual but linked tales all occuring in the night time. Kitson provides the prose, Osborn the musical interludes. The first, a fun "story within a story" about a group of retired assassins told by a father desperate to get his inquisitive son to go to sleep is probably the most fun and includes the delightful phrase "Hot Chocolate O Clockolate" and repeated musings on a character with deformed hands from "YEARS OF PUNCHING PEOPLE TO DEATH". It's a loose theme that allows Osborn to muse on magical happenings in the early hours including the lovely "Albert Went Out To See Rock Bands" about a gig goer of pensionable age.
The second concerns a man who follows a woman through the night to return a pen she left on a petrol station forecourt. This story never quite escapes the creepiness of its premise despite Kitson's awareness of this fact and it's the weakest of the three. The third selects a more fanciful theme of an administrative centre for love, where Osborn sings about the events filed away by the two protagonists. In between the warm, amusing dialogue, the two riff off each other beautifully, particularly on the subject of what to alter certain references to for an antipodean audience. Though replacing "Walnut Whip" with "Vegemite" feels like pandering to me.
Anyone familiar with Kitson's ouvre will recognise the touchstones here, elderly men, cakes, hot beverages, big ludicrous gestures and the quiet dignity of unrequited love. An evening listening to him in any form is invariably a delight whilst I've long been a fan of Osborn's quietly charming ditties. Australia is in for a treat.
Comments
Post a Comment