The frantic comedic ramblings of Alex Franklin produce a cacophony of laughter that echoes around the room. Franklin’s comedy focuses on their experience as a trans woman, and about how using she/they pronouns may be too much for her dad to handle.
As Franklin takes the stage, she glides over to her keyboard and sings a satirical opening number all about how she wants to take over women’s sports and spaces with ‘evil’ transness. She confides that all the transwomen she’s ever encountered hate sports.
Franklin moves on to a hilarious and well put together PowerPoint that requires the audience’s participation to help identify the “regular man” behind multiple silhouette couplets. One of Franklin’s silhouette couplings includes J.K. Rowling and Robert Galbraith, which is of course Rowling’s pseudonym for when she wants to be a boy, she jokes.
Franklin has ADHD, which is why she has hyper fixated on gifting their friends large furniture items. It even got to a point that she would go around their neighbourhood door-to-door style and ask if they needed furniture removed.
Another farcical joke assisted by the use of Franklin’s trusty PowerPoint, is their own version of the philosophical trolley question – which asks if it is justified to sacrifice the few in the interests of the many. The experiment eventually spins so far out of control that the two train tracks wound up connected.
Franklin’s show explores the raw and moments in their life but ends on a genuinely uplifting and heartwarming note that leaves the audience beaming.
Alex Franklin: Gurl Code, 20:25, Underbelly Cowgate – Delhi Belly, Aug 6-11, 13-25.
https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/alex-franklin-gurl-code
