Campitalism: Three Gays Try to Fix the Economy styles itself as an irreverent parody of the “techbro class” that dominates our economy and political discussions of it, yet at a deeper level inadvertently articulates the vulgar anti-capitalism of those born after 1995 and its origins. 

Written and performed by the three titular “boys” of the troupe Boy Theatre: Kit Miles [they/them], Maria Telnikoff [she/they], and Cherry Eckel [she/they] (who, for disclosure, is a friend), the Edinburgh Fringe show frames itself via the troupe winning a grant to put on a stage show that will fix the economy, but through the process of learning “basic economics” transforms them into the Three Brians. One is hopelessly divorced, one is a terminal womaniser, and one is a failing father; topped off by the fact they all have drug problems, a lack of workplace boundaries, and repressed homosexual urges. 

A maximalist queer cabaret, the style of the comedy conjures up Blackadder’s Lord Flashheart mixed with internet comedian & animator TomSka.¹ This generational element, raised on reruns of 80s and 90s British sitcoms and the online humour of Tumblr, YouTube, and Newgrounds, foreshadows the show’s conscious and subconscious origins. 

The Three Brians elucidate that we are a part of a financial literacy seminar, titled “FAGGS” just in case you were expecting anything too serious, and then proceed to explain how we are all gay losers who know nothing about how the economy really works in the same tone that the internet libertarians of the 2010s would tell you to learn “basic economics”. The show’s content and style feel like it should alienate a larger audience; full of crass innuendo, drilled-in callback bits, and cocaine-driven homoerotic encounters, yet it appears that both the Fringe’s general attendance and the show’s own [self-declared meagre] marketing had managed to self-select for an audience that loved every minute of it. After a whirlwind tour of some economic concepts, the show’s real lighthouse comes into view: suddenly the pretence is dropped, and the lights focus on one of the players; in this case, Telnikof. She recounts their parents’ emigration from the recently collapsed Soviet Union to Britain, their lack of “common financial literacy” (e.g., that physically destroying a credit card would wipe away its debt), and the immense work to keep afloat in 2000s Britain. Their dad, a recently out-of-the-closet trans woman, faces the issues attached to that while having to commute two hours each way by bus from Leicester to London. In their words, you see a 21st-century equivalent of Bill Haywood’s famous quote articulated: “I may have not read Kapital by Marx, but I have the marks of capital all over my body”. It is a deep, naked, raw understanding of capitalism’s impact upon the life of the individual. 

The show then ratchets up and continues apace. I will admit that on this and the next two further occasions we receive monologues, the transitions between this earnest sincerity and the other two Brians doing cocaine are a bit jarring and could have been better choreographed. This is essentially how the show continues, bar a cul-de-sac into an extended bit with the womaniser Brian facing “The Lady from HR”; which, while funny, does break the momentum of the show and feels out of place as the lone “sketch” within the production. Within the two remaining monologues, Miles recounts their childhood home being repossessed around 2008, and living with their grandparents as a “great adventure” while actually sleeping in a wardrobe. Likewise, Eckel touches upon growing up with a tight belt in Tooting, and how this later fed into mental health issues around spending and eating. They are moving emblems of where the production came from: not as the sharpened spearpoint of an ideological mission but youth honestly recounting their experiences.

What Boy Theatre represents is a generation raised in capitalism-in-crisis; able to articulate childhood memories as they relate to financial and economic woe, they are now reaching an age where their formative years can be autoanalysed, leading them to develop a vulgar (not in the sense of obscene, but of coming from the masses) anticapitalism. I would not deign to guess at motivations for this production beyond the openly stated social democratic ideals of financial regulation, a wealth tax, a functional welfare state that come fully formed at the end, along with the love of the art of course; however, the fact that their youth experiences had led them to develop such a work of art when given the chance to is indicative of a wealth of knowledge, passion, and potential out there. How many Brechts, Alex Glasgows, and Steinbecks are being slept upon by the socialist movement? In times gone past, a plethora of organisations would be finding these articulate artists and giving them not just the resources to stage their productions, but an ideological framework to develop their lived experience and contacts to further their careers. The great Kitchen Sink plays of the post-war period are this taken to its logical extent. And while the left has been happy to adopt artists and creatives into its ranks (lest we forget “#Grime4Corbyn”), it really isn’t good enough. We as anti-capitalists have to help nurture art and artists through the resources available to us. The praise of a singer who has either made it or was born without financial care in the world is nothing compared to building an organic culture born from experience. Likewise, to platform those who are ideologically sound yet produce art that is uncompelling is not really worthwhile. 

When a show like “Campitalism” comes across our desks, we have to be able to react to it suitably to the form and content before us. Putting it on in an old Miners’ Welfare in Wigan may not be the best move, but using our connections to help it get staged and promoted where we know its audience can be found should be second nature. This is not a new concept, and actually not something that should be especially hard to redevelop. There are many networks in the arts, official and unofficial, that can be leveraged for this purpose. When events like The World Transformed come up, we should be asking ourselves “What acts do our comrades need to see?” Likewise, the funds sitting in trade union branch accounts should be freed to help develop these artists and their art; for as the song says, “Yes it is bread we fight for, but we fight for roses too”. In our atomised and socially fragmented age, we also need an aesthetic “diversity of tactics”: the experience of someone from a council estate in a decaying New Town will not be the same as someone who grew up in an immigrant family in a metropole or a newly minted member of the graduate precariat, yet they have important stories to tell not just in and of themselves, but as vehicles to reach the diversity within the working class of this country. Jennifer Reid and Rootz, of Middleton and Hulme respectively, share little in the form of their art, but their content fundamentally touches on similar themes, for it comes from the same class.

It will not be everyone’s cup of tea, but Campitalism is fundamentally a great show made by dedicated thespians who love their craft. The fact that their life experiences drove them to develop a production about skewering the financial bourgeoisie is a blessing and an opportunity; talent such as this cannot be ignored by anyone with a lick of sense. 

The Edinburgh Fringe run of “Campitalism: Three Gays Try to Fix the Economy” has naturally come to an end with the completion of the festival. Boy Theatre intends to stage future productions of the show, funding and logistics permitting. The show ran for the month of August in The Attic at the Pleasance Courtyard.

1.  It is worth saying that homages to both Rik Mayall and Thomas Ridgewell can be found within the show, which were apparently accidentally adopted into the script in the process of developing the production ↩︎