Alex Kealy: Winner Takes All, 13th April
Rondo Theatre, Bath
Thurs 13 April, 2023 @ 8pm
‘Sharply witty, almost sexily cerebral…Kealy is going places.’
★★★★ Dominic Cavendish, Daily Telegraph
Embarking on his latest national tour after an acclaimed sell-out Edinburgh Fringe run, Alex Kealy, the ‘rising star of the British stand-up scene’ (The List) explores Silicon Valley tech monopolies, advertising and addiction through his ‘perfectly expressed gags’ (Chortle).
Big Tech firms have all pivoted to business models involving advertising, surveillance, addiction and monopoly, reneging on their previous idealistic visions of what the internet could achieve. Alex Kealy is determined to document this because it’s the big political tussle of the 21st century and, crucially, not because he recently had a break-up and his ex works at Google.
Now, comedy’s most conflict-averse satirist dares to suggest that perhaps a small clique of companies exercising the greatest level of monopoly control since the robber barons of the 1880s over the vital industries of the future is potentially slightly sub-ideal.
Can we break free form their stranglehold? Probably not. But maybe there are things we can learn from these Stakhanovite Silicon Valley founders like Jeff Bezos, Peter Thiel and Twitter’s new wokefinder general and Tesla’s top banana Elon Musk? While writing this show, like those Palo Alto Tech bros and their hustler “grindsets”, Kealy has been getting up every day at 4am (California time, so about midday GMT – it’s not been very taxing).
Tickets – https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/rondotheatre/alex-kealy-winner-takes-all/e-zaalzz
