Daniel Kitson’s new show was only announced three weeks ago, and it’ll be over by the weekend. But such is the cult comic’s draw that presumably even this short run is a blessed relief for the Royal Exchange, following the abrupt cancellation of its autumn production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream due to irreconcilable differences around references to Palestine.

Kitson is adept at standing on a bare stage and holding an audience with nothing more than a story — and so it proves here. He tells us about Bob, sitting on a bench looking out to sea, with a cassette machine. He spent years recording daily thoughts; now he’s taping over them with the sounds of the world around him. He’s interrupted by a woman, Meredith, and inadvertently captures their first conversation.

Twenty years later, Claire is on a bus. She wants to listen to her old-fashioned Walkman, but a man named Pickle keeps interrupting her. They get chatting about love. Pickle was married for 17 years; Claire’s longest relationship lasted two weeks.

She doesn’t want to let anyone in. He persuades her she really should. Love, Pickle promises, is like having an apple tree growing through your house — yes, it’s a disruption, but you get to pick apples whenever you like. It’s one of several lovely lines touching on the unknowability of other people, and the wonder of that. “People are not puddles,” Kitson says — they’re always deeper than you think.

It’s no spoiler to say that these fairly slight stories intertwine, and it doesn’t take astonishing leaps to guess how. But there’s a comforting loveliness to the way they unspool.

Kitson continually interrupts his stories — sometimes with the ad libs of a stand-up working the room; mostly with asides from his own life. These seemingly random riffs remind you of Kitson’s comic timing, but they also form a parallel to Bob’s recording of his daily musings on tape. A man speaking, alone, into a mike.

And Kitson picks at the nature of storytelling itself. How he must filter this stuff-of-life down to craft a memorable line. There are many allusions to the unfinished state of the show; he apparently only worked out what it was about during previews, and promises it’ll be good by spring.

Of course that’s all part of Kitson’s endearingly shambolic persona: hands tucked under armpits, ambling around the stage. To say the audience is onside would be an understatement: there are belly laughs when he so much as ties a shoelace. Such goodwill certainly helps this show, but Pith is already quietly captivating — no need to wait till spring.

★★★★☆
90min
To October 26, royalexchange.co.uk