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Literally Who Cares?!

Leo Reich

HBO · 2023 · 66 min

A camp, musical cabaret skewering Gen-Z self-absorption and dread.

Leo Reich spends his debut hour playing a monstrous caricature of a Gen-Z influencer, a camp egomaniac who uses social media buzzwords to cover up a gaping existential void. He struts across the stage in raver gear, asking the crowd “Am I hot?” and “Is this helping?” while delivering a mix of musical comedy, spoken-word memoir, and pure nonsense. Behind the theatrical self-absorption is a very funny, highly stylized look at the exhaustion of modern identity performance.

Filmed at the EartH theatre in Hackney, London, the special is the culmination of a show that took the 2022 Edinburgh Fringe by storm before transferring Off-Broadway. Reich, who previously toured as an opening act for Simon Amstell, leans heavily into electropop music to anchor his stage persona, belting out showy anthems about hookups and writing a song specifically dedicated to mocking “the old” for ruining the environment. He breaks up the music with theatrical storytelling, including a dramatic reading of his own premature memoir over a jazz backing track and a mournful lament about his last forward roll at age nine. The stage show earned Reich a Best Newcomer nomination at the Edinburgh Comedy Awards in 2022 before A24 and HBO teamed up to produce this filmed version in late 2023.

The set list

5 bits

  1. Portrait of the Artist as a Ripped Slut / Commodifying Lived Experience

    Reads from an oversized prop book titled as his memoir, escalating into a novel and a rom-com based on his life, highlighting how he felt lucky to be queer 'branding-wise.'

  2. Song for the Old

    Performs a plangent, Céline Dion-style pop ballad with an emotive key change, mockingly honoring older generations who own nine-bed Georgian townhouses while leaving behind an apocalypse.

  3. Fucking Someone Who Hates Me

    Turns an avoidant attachment style and fixation on an ex-boyfriend into a vampy electropop musical number composed by Toby Marlow.

  4. Disdain for Heterosexual Smugness

    Skewers straight couples with a Steve Martin-style vocal affectation, declaring their relationship dynamics to be performative and fake.

  5. Early Twenties Pandemic Reality

    Muses on the disappointment of spending his early twenties repeatedly googling 'death toll' rather than navigating city dating scenes.

How it plays

Tone
Darkly hilarious, biting, campy, nihilistic, and self-deprecating.
On stage
An extravagant, flamboyant, self-diagnosed important young mind; a venal, hyper-ironic narcissist and 'influencer clown' sporting batwing eyeliner, form-fitting clothes, and athletic shorts.
Pace
Kinetic, bouncy, and arch, oscillating sharply between frantic disaffection, high camp, and comically shallow earnestness.
About
Gen-Z disaffection and narcissism, Queer identity and relationships, Commodification of lived experience and social media, Late-stage capitalism and corporate individualism, Generational divide with older generations, COVID-19 pandemic and global crises

What the critics said

Extensively praised by critics as an incisive, brilliant, and blisteringly funny encapsulation of Gen-Z neuroses, irony, and self-absorption, blending first-rate comedic writing with sharp electropop musical numbers.

In the room: Enthusiastic and vocal, with crowd members laughing and whooping, though some audience members appeared to earnestly applaud setups as if they were sincere political statements.

Summed up from reviews, articles and listings. Sources: earthackney.co.uk, press.wbd.com, comedy.co.uk, spectra.theater, nytimes.com, nystagereview.com, pastemagazine.com, newyorker.com, en.wikipedia.org, imdb.com.

Backstory

Crafted as a satirical indictment and examination of Generation Z anxiety, narcissism, late-stage capitalism, identity commodification, and coming of age during global crises like COVID-19. Marked the first standup comedy special by a British act produced by A24.

Details

Released
Taped
EartH (Evolutionary Arts Hackney), London
Runtime
66 min
Where
HBO
Director
Thomas Hardiman
Honors
The Guardian's Number One Comedy Show of 2022Nominee, Best Newcomer, 2022 Edinburgh Comedy Awards (Dave Comedy Awards)Nominee, Most Outstanding Show Award, 2023 Melbourne International Comedy Festival and 1 more
Topics

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