Racoons, a keyboard, and a PowerPoint slideshow evocative of your English class in the early 2000s when your teacher had a hangover—three things that you may not expect to see in the same stand-up show, but I can assure you that Alex Franklin, quite inexplicably, makes it work.
Alex brings an energetic, at times frantic, presence to the stage and has the audience captured intently within the first few minutes of her show, Gurl Code. She launches into a hysterical musical number about the various ways that trans women are “out to get everyone else,” notably, by dominating women’s rugby. From here, she begins to take us through her journey of transitioning and searching for true trans joy, particularly focusing on how she is going to come out to her dad. Throughout the show, she recounts her experiences navigating relationships with friends, family, and with herself as her identity shifts. She shares her escapades by means of song, stories about bringing furniture on the tube, and a slide show that prominently features racoons (for reasons that remain unclear other than to mirror the wild and chaotic spark of the show.)
The phrase “In case you didn’t know,” is used recurrently throughout to a point of being repetitive and redundant, making me feel like this was more of a lecture rather than a comedic performance. Alex delivers in-depth explanations of various terms such as “pansexual” and even “trans woman” among other relevant subject matter. I can’t speak for everyone, but I certainly felt that myself and likely other showgoers were already familiar with such topics as these and that Alex wasted valuable minutes of stage time explaining things that didn’t need so much attention. I felt this distracted the audience from the core of the show; making the comedy feel more educational rather than entertaining. A balanced incorporation of the latter is not achieved to the extent I would have hoped and Alex limits her show’s potential in this way.
Despite frequently derailing from an already sporadic narrative by jumping quickly from story to story, Alex manages to give us a production that is simultaneously riddled with humor, heartbreak, triumph, and acceptance. She ultimately leaves us on a high note as she invites an interpretation of identity as a constantly fluid phenomenon and allows us to sit with the beautiful notion that our lives are only as colourful as we choose to see them as.
Gurl Code is running until the 25th of August at 20:25 at Underbelly, Cowgate.
Tickets can be purchased here.
Images provided to The Student as press material.