“Is this a joke?”
That’s Kitch’s own question about a routine in which he plays Gordon Ramsay, berating his own penis that’s been taken over, Ratatouille-style, by a persona called “ratcock”.
To watch Kitch is to spend time, almost, with two comics: the one performing the show, and the one providing constant commentary on it, its reviews, and what exactly Kitch is doing.
A comparison to jazz in a rave review of Kitch’s last show has become an obsession in this one (that review compared Kitch to Matisse; here, he appears in front of a Matisse snail). Kitch is clearly a jazz aficionado (just clock the show title), and both delighted and horrified by the comparison, asking whether it puts his work in the category of “shit on purpose”, doomed to audience reviews of unfunniness appended with “he’s clever though”.
In comedy, this is usually called anti-comedy, an unfair moniker for something that, when done right, can be very funny. And Kitch is indeed funny, with a finer attunement to entertaining his audience than some of the more ‘difficult’ proponents of the genre. There’s plenty else going on (a divorce story is conspicuously buried in all that meta-commentary), but jazz is probably still the best referent: Some may be baffled, left cold, or irritated, but plenty of comedy aficionados will find in Kitch what Kicth finds in Captain Beefheart: deconstruction and experimentation that entertains.
Nate Kitch Replica, Gilded Balloon Patter House, until 30 Aug, 5pm