It’s good to see the Gaffer as I call him is getting such a agood review for his one man show in Edinburgh
It’s safe to say that the title of Destroy PowerPoint is distinctly misleading. As David Gaffney confesses at the beginning, he might have started off thinking PowerPoint was a little evil, but in the end, he came to see the presentation software as something that liberates creativity. In this respect, the play is more a celebration of the possibilities of PowerPoint than a call to arms for us to storm the offices of Microsoft and banish it forever. An exercise in storytelling, Destroy PowerPoint is made up of a collection of short stories all centring around a PowerPoint presentation. There are stories of vengeance, of love, of the mind-numbing routine of office life. Some are more compelling than others, though in ‘Kicking the Whale’, Gaffney’s conceit reaches its peak as a disenchanted employee uses PowerPoint to break free. There’s something oddly beautiful about the PowerPoint presentations Gaffney uses to illustrate his tales. In ‘King of PowerPoint’, which acts as something of an homage to office communication through the years, there’s a distinct romance to the smudged felt-tip acetates which flash across the screen.
