Solo tour-de-force recreates baby boomers' coming of age (Review)

Posted on: Friday, January 22, 2016
LINCOLN KAYE, VANCOUVER OBSERVER

Here I am in a dark room, staring at a dimly lit, translucent cylinder, beguiled by amorphous figures, fleeting shadows and snatches of retro music. It’s all somehow hauntingly familiar, but it took awhile for my aging brain to quite place what the scene recalled.

It wasn't until halfway through Act One of actor/writer/singer/mimic Rick Miller's solo tour de force "BOOM" that the connection finally hit. Of course! The whole set-up is like a giant lava lamp, the psychedelic dorm room accoutrement that hypnotized me (and just about everyone else in my privileged, drug-addled demographic) back in the “swinging sixties.”

What could be a more appropriate icon for Miller's chosen subject, the shaping of our Baby Boomer generation from its post-War birth to its coming of age in the 1970s?