Get Your Own Back: nostalgia and gunge
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Knightmare Live, the live revival of the cult Eighties kids’ TV show, proved to be a massive hit at the Fringe in the last two years – highlighting just how hungry the Generation Y audience is for nostalgia. This niche is served this year by Get Your Own Back: Live!, based on the long-running kids’ gameshow in which kids would play to ‘gunge’ an adult they felt had wronged them.
Lacking the giant sets of the TV show, the stage at the Gilded Balloon is adorned by a single gunge tank centre stage. Instead of kids competing, it’s Fringe performers promoting their shows. The madcap games and signature climactic gungings are overseen by original host Dave Benson Phillips, who hypes up the twentysomething crowd with energy and self-effacing humour.
Ticking all the right nostalgic boxes, Get Your Own Back: Live! is great fun for millennials, but completely baffling for everyone else.
Christian Butler is a writer and musician based in London.
Get Your Own Back: Live! is at the Gilded Balloon until 31 August.
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