Fanboy

 Tobacco Factory

If you are at all interested in Star Wars you urgently need to see "Fanboy" by Joe Sellman-Leava. I reviewed it back in 2020 when it was workshopped at the Wardrobe. I am not quite sure whether I ought to review it in detail: there is always a temptation to give away too many of the jokes and twists. 

Joe, as himself, addresses the audience about up as a Star Wars fan. (He also talks about Donkey Kong, the Muppets Christmas Carol, Warhammer, and indeed, bird-watching: but the show is heavily focussed on Star Wars.) He's a generation younger than us: he grew up watching the Trilogy as Old Movies on VHS; but was taken to the first night of Phantom Menace by a beloved uncle when he was ten years old. So Phantom Menace, not a New Hope, is the crucial text for him; and there was never a time when his love for the movies was not controversial; when the Midichlorians and Gungans were not something you had to have an opinion on. The show tells a fairly clear story -- loving the movies as a young kid; bonding with a school friend around hating the prequels; meeting a liberal-feminist girlfriend at the first night of Force Awakens; watching his school friend sink into Gamergate backlash; and seeing the joy being sucked out of the movies by the polarisation around Last Jedi. 

It's fantastically inventive; he's a good enough mimic to pull off a three minute summary of the Trilogy, doing all the crucial quotes in the right voices; and to repeat the trick for Muppets Christmas Carol later in the evening. The central conceit -- a dialogue with his ten year old self -- is technically audacious. 

But the important thing about the show is that it gets it. It gets nostalgia; the old Nintendo console and Warhammer books and the lost Jar-Jar-Binks toy which becomes a running motif. (Neil Gaiman did a similar thing about a lost Spider-Man free gift in the Thousandth issue of Spider-Man; incidentally.) It gets the basic joy of the movies -- good defeating evil in a universe of space-wizards; and it gets the fan-enthusiasm for close, creative interpretations. And it draws the line between Last Jedi, Brexit, Trump, Johnson and Gamergate. It manages to make peace with the past and gently suggest that we move on from it. I suppose it is really about identity: both in the sense of how we become who we are, and in the sense of what groups we identify with. 

It is wrong about Empire Strikes Back being the best, but right about Rise of Skywalker undoing everything interesting in Last Jedi. It doesn't venture an opinion on Baby Yoda. It's full of detail and in-jokes. His first encounter with his right-wing friend comes about because he finds himself standing on a chair at a party and blurts out "It's no good, Anakin, I have the high ground." But I think it is perfectly accessible to the non-fan. (I grokked most of Fever Pitch even though I barely know the rules of association football.) 

I think he's touring the show, and I repeat: you really need to see it.

Hi,

I'm Andrew.

I am trying very hard to be a semi-professional writer and have taken the leap of faith of down-sizing my day job.

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