Uncanny X Gen have struck upon a comedy goldmine. Who couldn’t find the eighties, the decade that Generation X influenced the most, anything but hilarious? And this show is brought to life by three proud X’s, Carolyn Chillura, Gavin Baskerville and Wendy Little. Unfortunately though, they don’t capitalise on what’s under their noses.
I’m a Gen X’er, 1972 vintage. I remember John Lennon being shot; I wore bubble skirts, baggies, paisley and rugby style windcheaters that were specifically made for girls; I remember Ronald Reagan; The Breakfast Club; the Berlin Wall; Madonna; Malcolm Fraser losing his pants; the Moonwalk; Ferris Bueller’s Day Off; Max Headroom; and so on. But listing those things doesn’t equal comedy, which is one of the problems with this show. Mentioning legwarmers, for example, might get a laugh of recognition and of “oh yeah, how hideous were legwarmers”, but unless you can extrapolate on that sufficiently, it doesn’t really deserve the laugh it gets
Carolyn Chillura was the guiltiest of this. She brought a lot of laughs from the audience but mainly through recognition and reminiscence. Shirts with shoulder pads; Post-it Notes; the hole in the ozone layer; fluorescent clothes and leg warmers. She also had some material oriented around the number sixty nine, which was over mined of its already slim comedy potential, as well as some fairly clichéd stuff about her parents being Italian. Gavin Baskerville was easily the best of the three, with his natural on stage ease and strong material serving him well. He had a particularly strong set about peanut allergies and, whilst straying occasionally onto doing little more than listing stuff from the 80’s (aids, nuclear threat, fashion again) he did also include some moderately successful material about share houses and Twitter. Wendy Little’s set seemed intriguing at first, with her strumming her guitar whilst talking about 80’s technology, occasionally over pronouncing words like carbon copy. This was followed though by a fairly uninspired musical parody about vanity goggling. This then degenerated into a messy set which became sort of quiet and odd, but not odd in a good way, before another weak parody song to the tune of Stuck in the Middle finished it off.
At the begging of the show all three appeared on stage together (as much as they could in this tiny venue) mainly to do some housekeeping, but I have to say this little bit of three way banter showed a glimpse of some potential that wasn’t realised in the show itself.
The popularity of Channel Ten’s Talking About Your Generation has made the generation divides the subject of great interest. The audience present at the show was noticeably populated by people of my age, again proving what a goldmine this show could be. As all the performers point out, Gen X, whilst famous for bad eighties fashion, is generally outshone by its immediate neighbours. There’s the corporate monopolising, early investment in real estate and early retirement inducing wealth of the Baby Boomers. Then there’s Gen Y, pretty Gen Y, who can afford the upkeep on their endless technology and their obsessively maintained images because they still live with Mum and Dad. As Carolyn points out, Gen X is the bespectacled Jan between the glamorous Marcia and the adorable Cindy. So, why not capitalise on us inbetweeners, we need a voice.
Ultimately, though, this was just a three way group show with a tenuous link to make it appear thematic. I’m disappointed that they didn’t work together a little more and get creative with it in order to make a real feature of it. They’ve come up with an idea that can bear a huge amount of fruit. Having planted the seed, they may find that someone else comes along and reaps the harvest. The show itself left me disappointed.
For full details of this show check out the Comedy Festival website