Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

Nate Kitch’s debut last year was a show about nothing, ditching conventional notions of structure and routines for something more freewheeling and responsive to whatever was happening in the room. I didn’t see that one, but this new one feels like more of the same, albeit on a potentially smaller scale.

Last year’s show was an homage of sorts to Kazimir Malevich’s painting Black Square, and Something Different!!!!! is named after an early free jazz album by Albert Ayler, but this show does not feel exactly like free jazz

In this performance at least, Kitch restricted himself largely to the stage and told a number of stories that could pass for conventional comedy routines, albeit a little light on laughs. With his wonky spectacles (he tells us he bent them out of shape intentionally) and brash self-reflexivity, he seems to want to project the air of a wild man who could do anything at any time, but in the end does not fulfil that promise. 

A lot of time is spent commenting on the show and talking around the processes behind it (his tech, his poster, his thematic ambitions) but the nugget of comedy gold that would justify his approach never quite arises.

The prepared bits deal with a series of minor traumas from the last year. His brother broke up with his girlfriend, his stepdad was hospitalised for a burst appendix and his grandfather fell down the stairs. 

It wouldn’t quite qualify as trauma on his part and it’s not intended as such, but perhaps it’s meant to evoke a sense of fragility. He often delivers his lines with the distinctive rhythms of John Kearns, whose whole persona is geared towards a comic vulnerability, but Kitch’s gritted-teeth, hell for leather approach is less emotive.

Obviously he’s far from the first comic to talk metatextually about his show as he performs it, and he’s probably not even the most extreme example. He’s certainly ambitious in the way he tests the format, even if he’s not especially original, and the audience responded extremely positively. Personally I only got a couple of big laughs, although I did think it was funny to try to do the sad part of the show while being interrupted by honking chiptune music.

What’s surprising is that, when he does allow himself a more written-sounding joke, it tends to be a bit of a groaner, like the one about the clown road accident, ‘12 dead, one car.’ You can feel Kitch’s comedy straining to produce something as iconoclastic as free jazz, and it’s admirable, but the output is not quite matching the input yet.

Review date: 15 Aug 2025
Reviewed by: Tim Harding
Reviewed at: Gilded Balloon Patter House