Rick Miller is a treasure. The Montreal-born, Toronto-based writer, director and performer is the kind of guy who animates a set the minute he walks on stage. BOOM X, The Music, Politics and Culture of Generation X is the second in a trilogy of plays that began with BOOM, which chronicled the baby boom generation. (BOOM Y will premiere in 2021.)

The era of the baby boom generation (1945 to 1969) had a kind of homogeneity, Miller explains in his intro, that made BOOM a quite different proposition than the conflicted, messy and polarizing times of the 1970s, 80s and 90s. But just his thing, for Miller, born March 12, 1970, is a Gen-Xer.

A gifted impersonator and rock musician, Miller conceived a show that depends on the light and production design of Bruno Matte, Nicolas Dostie and Irina Litvinenko to provide a multilayered, multimedia buzz. At more than two hours in length, BOOM X feels like a big show, but it’s just one man in multiple costumes and wigs, acting in front of or behind a scrim over which video is running – along with headlines from each year he’s re-enacting. (His Tina Turner and Alanis Morissette are not to be missed.)

A baseball metaphor, employing the history of the Montreal Expos, provides the through line. Miller’s four Generation X representatives are introduced and framed as if they were on baseball cards: Howard, born in Winnipeg; Annika from East Germany; Steph from the small town of Exeter, Ontario; and Brandon, youngest of them, the son of a white South African and his Jamaican wife.

BOOM X is ingeniously presented. Four scrims surround a thrust stage upon the Belfry proscenium stage and as video footage comes up rapidfire on the scrim – everything from a scene from Altamont to a commercial for LIFE cereal to the shooting of four students at Kent State university in May 1970 – Miller either lip syncs their performances and speeches or acts as a narrator, or impersonates Howard, Annika, Steph or Brandon, telling each of their stories of the Generation X years. By the end we find out how they become important figures in Miller’s life.

Social commentary, political and cultural analysis, family history – BOOM X is all of these. But above all it’s just good entertainment, sure to please any generation.

Trailer: https://vimeo.com/351489824

BOOM X

Written, directed and performed by Rick Miller

Produced by Kidoons and WYRD Productions, in association with Theatre Calgary and The 20K Collective

At the Belfry Theatre, Victoria BC, until August 18, 2019