Review: ‘The Interminable Suicide of Gregory Church’ at Liverpool Everyman

Daniel Kitson is not a man short on words. In his latest one-man show, he takes us on a roller coaster of emotions led by his storytelling and a unique way of delivering his performance, which not many people had bargained for.

Kitson begins by telling us about the house that he was looking to buy, and the moment that he had opened the loft to discover that there were over twenty boxes stored, all stuffed with letters, written by different people over a time scale of roughly twenty years. But there is one letter that catches his eye, which changes the way he would live his life for the best part of two years. A suicide note written by someone called Gregory Church.

In ninety minutes Kitson manages to squeeze in almost every detail of Gregory Church’s life from the very first letter he writes in the 1980’s to his apparent suicide note over twenty years later. He writes to everyone it seems, some write back, some don’t bother.

Unlikely relationships are formed this way; Benjamin, the bullied schoolboy who stands at the bus stop across the road from his house, tentatively replies to Gregory’s letter with a ‘Hello, this is weird.’ Later on we hear that Benjamin has gone on to do well at University and has invited Gregory to his wedding. Gregory had written over 3000 letters to a woman called Lillian, but she never once wrote back.

Kitson is very good at details, at picking up things and magnifying them for you. His dialogue is fast paced but fluent and articulate most of the way through. He doesn’t lose pace at all and constantly pulls you back in when he thinks he might be leaving the audience behind. Kitson doesn’t use any props, only a note pad from which he reads snippets of letters, or to give us various statistics about the 30,000 plus letters that he had read through from beginning to end.

Kitson's enjoyment in telling his story is infectious, as he draws you into the life and death of Gregory Church. Outstanding.

9/10

For more information about tour dates please log onto www.danielkitson.com or www.everymanplayhouse.com for more details.

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