Daniel Kitson's C90 at Riverside Studios

Daniel Kitson - C90,
originally uploaded by Simon Scott.

Daniel Kitson has been warming up his new story show at Riverside Studios. An idea tangential to one of his Stories For The Wobbly Hearted, and possibly influenced by Poliakoff's Shooting The Past, features a man working in an archive devoted to compilation tapes, who on his last day receives a tape of his own that moves him so much he attempts to discover who sent it.

Kitson has been keen to make his work more theatrical, and this seems most explicitly realised in the set on which he tells this extended story. The office is realised with a large shelving unit and one of those sliding ladders you get in libraries, or more correctly films about libraries. Added to that is the main character's desk, and a few boxes of discarded tapes. When the action went beyond the office, Kitson moved upstage.

The story itself makes a claim for the importance of normal people, punishing characters that might be familiar to us from Kitson's stand-up as his pet hates, and offering hope and joy to the characters that he evidently genuinely cares about. And there are jokes too. Some have criticised the premise of the show - why is there an archive of compilation tapes? What is it for? - but that doesn't matter - its existence is a foundation to the story, and not only gives an excuse for the slow revelation of the second character, Milly, but also realises the dark background of the tale, that of a cruel and humiliating world that will readily chew people up and spit them out. The beauty of the characters Kitson has created is that they are willing to make sure that doesn't happen.