Who? Rick Miller.
The award-winning, uber-talented mimic-musician-writer-performer-director-educator-quick change artist . . . who first came to fame almost 30 years ago with MacHomer, a one-person play blending William Shakespeare’s tragedy Macbeth with the animated television series The Simpsons.
What? A near-indescribable synaesthetic and narrative mash-up.
Boom X is a one-man show that explores Generation X – the disaffected “slacker” generation to which Miller himself belongs – through the period’s music, history, technology, politics and personalities (the broadly sociocultural and the narrowly personal and familial). Imagine a 25-year version of The Wonder Years that folds in the quick changes of your favorite Tik Tok vocal imitator, a Reuters greatest-hits ticker tape of historical headlines, video clips and Pop-up Video-like insights – spliced together into a dazzling, satisfying whole through cool technology, thoughtful narration, wig changes, sleight-of-hand and sleight-of-voice. (I said it was near-indescribable . . .)
When? The period from 1970-1995.
Boom X is the second of Miller’s Boom trilogy (Part 1: Boom focused on the Baby Boomers from 1945-1969, Part 3: Boom YZ focuses on Gen Y and Gen Z from 1996 to 2020). Like the two other shows, Boom X covers 25 years one-by=-one, and features Miller doing 100 characters. He steps in and out of projections and wigs, using his amazing vocal mimicry – often synched to video clips – to sing snippets of the most popular songs and give voice to friends and famous figures. All in just 100 minutes.
Where? Montreal, which is where Miller grew up.
X marks this spot as the biographical epicenter of Miller’s account. It recursively travels from his own life story to local history – for instance, the October crisis and the rise and fall (over and over again) of the Montreal Expos – and radiates outwards to fold in Canadian, American, and internationally defining events like Watergate, the AIDS crisis, the rise of computers and video games, the fall of the Berlin Wall, LiveAid, the Iraq War, and so on. The “X” he uses to focus on Montreal? Like the greater “X” used to connote this generation born across this vast quarter-century, Miller wants us to know that it’s a construct that facilitates meaning-making, not an absolute truth.
Why? To make sense of our past, so we can create a better future. Or, as Miller says several times, “Fail better.” On the personal side of the ledger, Miller takes this premise seriously: by bringing to life his own failures as a myopic white privileged youth, who was slow to see others and the injustices perpetrated on them.
On the audience side of the ledger, this purpose is less realized. Miller asserts early on that the value of the Boom X experience is not nostalgia – not that, he says (channeling 1990’s Seinfeld) there’s anything wrong with that. But as the mimicking Miller transforms himself – from Jimi Hendrix to Tina Turner, from to A-ha to Devo, from a wicked-good Axl Rose to a wonderful Alanis Morrisette, and into so many more iconic singers – the whoops of recognition, “Name that tune” shoutouts, and giddy audience singalongs show us that nostalgia is a major feature, not a bug of Boom X’s soundtrack to Gen-X life. We’re not really making sense of our past . . . we’re re-visiting it and enjoying the trip.
How? A syn-nostalgic sensory overload
Boom X works because of charisma, compelling narration, and syn-nostalgic sensory overload. Because it posits profundity which the show’s propulsive and relentlessly pleasing flow don’t afford us much space to ponder. And because we don’t mind . . . we’re too busy enjoying Miller’s amazingly fun, nostalgia-fuelled virtuoso trip through history and music.
Boom X is on stage at Crow’s Theatre until May 28, 2023. Reserve tickets on crowstheatre.com.
© Scott Sneddon, SesayArts Magazine, 2023
