"If there’s one lesson to be derived from 'Mouse,' it’s that you should always be suspicious of the connections you wishfully intuit with people you talk to. On the other hand, if you’re too wary in assessing what others have to say, then you’ll wind up missing out on many of the more pleasurable entertainments life has to offer, like this very show...Mr. Kitson has an uncommon gift for sustaining not only different and seemingly divergent story lines but also different sensibilities."
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"The most endearing sections are when he speaks directly to us…At times, and in comparison to these outrageously charming moments, the scripted sections can feel slightly too artificial, and we do see narrative developments coming a mile away. But that's all part of the aesthetic. Kitson likes a certain sense of the inevitable...Once you grasp a Kitson conceit, you should just sit back and watch it unwind like a reel-to-reel tape."
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"Kitson is a defiantly compelling performer...One of the great pleasures of a Kitson show is the contrast between the sweetness at the heart of many of his stories and the rather more acerbic quality of his audience interactions...Those who have seen Kitson’s work before will find the tone familiar and several of the twists extremely guessable. Still, there’s a beautifully shambolic quality to much of the show and the extemporaneous moments make the piece feel excitingly unpredictable."
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"Though the script takes some predictable turns, Kitson’s performance is consistently delightful...Only occasionally does this set of deftly interlaced shaggy-dog stories start to feel a bit too shaggy. Some more compression would help streamline things, to avoid the feeling of an overly drawn-out conclusion, but 'Mouse' still manages to capture the audience’s imagination in a sticky, sweet, entertaining trap of a play."
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"Kitson's dialogue combines gorgeous turns of phrase, daft comedy riffs, and more profound digs into human psyche...Kitson has won a huge following for tucking a comedian's laugh-rate inside moving stories of human frailty, served through some fiendish technical conceit or formal invention. 'Mouse' delivers on all three, a well-sprung trap of a show that draws you in and snaps shut in a hugely satisfying fashion."
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"Unsurprisingly for a show set in a steel container, 'Mouse' can feel claustrophobic, and couldn’t be accused of getting quickly to its point. But as ever, it’s easy to submit to Kitson’s playfully showy writing and his spirit of romantic melancholy that steers for the heart of what being alive is all about…The occasional clunkiness is forgivable in a show this humane and open-hearted."
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"This could become just another self-absorbed piece about the life of the artist...As ever, though, in Kitson’s hands, the language takes flight, and the detail of contemporary life that forms the backdrop to this strange incident glows with a strange, affectionate vividness, offering us a journey through loss, coincidence, and the tiny decisions that shape our lives, that haunts the mind, and confirms Kitson’s status as a master storyteller at the height of his powers."
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“As a writer and director he’s perfectly attuned to the uncomfortable mannerisms of communication with strangers, of breaking down the walls of resistance to shared experience which his characters have built...Some may argue that a piece in which so little essentially happens is overlong at one hundred minutes, that there’s a certain sense of repetition which might have been pared down without harming the work. I guess that depends on the viewer’s taste for Kitson."
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