Real tension in a comedy show can derail it, or inspire a performer to produce something special.
In the case of Nate Kitch’s Replica, on Monday 17th, it did both. Ultimately, this was a show about whether comedy can ever appeal to everyone. As Kitch put it: “It’s fine if not all of you like it.”
The dominant metaphor of the show was jazz, inspired by performing next to the Jazz Bar inside the Gilded Balloon’s Patter House. Jazz is complex, not universally appreciated, often discordant, and prone to unexpected tangents. That is Kitch’s style too, making him a distinctly niche performer. The tension between achieving success and creating something genuinely distinctive lay at the heart of the show.
Playing with expectations
It began strangely, with Kitch’s back to the audience; from the outset, he was playing with expectations. After several entertaining false starts, the show began to take shape, though, like jazz, its structure was never strict: “it can be what I say it is.” The tension between what was expected and what was delivered ran throughout. At times, he addressed it directly, insisting, “I don’t want to be a jazz comedian, I want to go mainstream,” before taking the show in a distinctly non-mainstream direction. He tested the audience too: “I know it’s spiky, and some of you can’t handle it.”
Elsewhere, he embraced the awkwardness and occasional bafflement his material provoked: “for God’s sake, stop subduing your laughter.”
Righteous Anger
What brought that tension to the surface was Kitch noticing that a couple of people in the front row clearly weren’t enjoying the show. “I think you guys want to leave… do leave if you want to,” he said, unthreateningly; he clearly didn’t want them to sit through something that wasn’t to their taste. But when they explained that they had asked AI to recommend Fringe shows similar to their favourite comedians, and that Daniel Kitson had come up as a match, Kitch’s reaction shifted. Kitson isn’t particularly mainstream himself, but Kitch’s style is far more surrealist and absurdist.
The idea that AI had chosen his show for them, only for him to be judged against the comedians it had suggested, fuelled a kind of righteous anger. He launched into parodies of mainstream American comedy, before riffing more broadly on whether AI could ever define someone’s taste in comedy.
Fuelled to New Heights
With his ire raised, Kitch proceeded to “shout” (his word) at the audience for the next twenty minutes or so. In truth, though the volume rose, so did the calibre of the material. He seemed to be fuelled to new heights. Perhaps that friction was exactly what he needed after a start that had felt either strange or slightly low on energy, understandable at the midpoint of the Fringe, when performers’ enthusiasm can dip and Fringe flu begins to take hold. Kitch dredged up energy from somewhere.
With his senses heightened, he began to deconstruct the show itself, pointing out what might have worked better in different circumstances, or with a different audience. There was a growing sense that the audience was partly to blame for things going off track: “I gave you multiple chances to do the show properly.”
Battling against time
None of this suggests a show lacking in genuine comedy; that certainly wasn’t the case. A large proportion of the audience clearly got it, though everyone in the room felt the tension and the sense that the show had somewhat derailed. Towards the end, Kitch was battling against time.
Rather than rushing the final sections, he chose to tell the audience what they would have contained, and what responses they might have provoked. It proved an effective device, once again playing with expectations of how a comedy show should proceed.
By the close, Kitch seemed genuine in describing the performance as very different from normal. It would be interesting to compare it with a more “normal” night. His regular sets may well have greater coherence, but perhaps they wouldn’t reach the heights of this slightly manic effort. This is the sort of performance that makes live comedy worth seeing: one that can’t be scripted and can only happen when a particular energy exists between performer and audience.
Nate Kitch: Replica is at Coorie at the Gilded Balloon Patter House at 17.00, until August 31st.
