MICF - Barry Castagnola: The Importance of Not Being Too Earnest

Barry is a child of the 80s... and proud of it. He doesn't just tell us about his love of all things from that era, instead he shows us. The stage is his bedroom, just as he left it and his mum maintained it, complete with his pre-adolescent diary and some daggy Christmas presents that should have been euthenised much much earlier (in the spirit of Easter, of course). The show is a light, breezy hour through which Barry shares some of his fond, and not so fond, childhood memories. True to the nature of someone brought up on Atari and Phil Collins, this is a multimedia extravaganza, with some creative use of still photos, video and even a crackerjack audio tape to close off the show. Whilst the show meanders on, it occassionally seems to lack direction and sees the performer head off on tangents that prove neither funny nor enlightening. Perhaps it was opening-weekend nerves, but Barry seemed to stumble across his words, hastily jumping to the next sentence before he'd finished the previous one. For children of the 80s, this show is like going to an 80s Theme Park ("Wobby's World", perhaps). For the rest, it's a tad
disappointing, although redeemed by an old audio clip played at the end which sheds a lot of light on the ways of the UK bobby.