Melbourne International Comedy Festival review by Steve Bennett

It’s a shambolic pile-up of ideas that are not always seen through, but Eddie Sharp’s show, just ended in Melbourne, demonstrates a nascent comedy talent as his picks through the debris of his life.

The imaginative narrative straddles the surreal and the autobiographical; after airing a cheesy real-life advert featuring artist Ken Done, Sharp claims he was a Harbour Baby, one of many discovered floating in Sydney’s Circular Quay. Then he takes a bolder step closer to home in confessing how he covers his sadness with an obsession with blockbuster movies, namely The Hobbit trilogy.

Fact and fiction are blurred throughout. Blacking up for a bike ride with his adoptive father or enjoying a career as a TV ‘sexpert’ seem unlikely, but they turn our to be true, anecdotes that are interspersed with more obvious one-man sketches such as a blokish seminar for would-be ‘Pussy Hounds’.

It’s all done on the super-cheap, the PowerPoints using the cheesiest fonts, and with the outlines of the text boxes still visible. He freely points out the flaws in his Magnum Opus, though the number of alternative comedians indulging themselves in a routine then commenting: ‘This bit is really too long’ is getting towards the epidemic. Stop it!

Yet there can be class: when he tells a story about a theft carried out at a cinema on his watch, it’s illustrated with charming cartoons, and there’s delicate craftsmanship in his payoff. And tenderness, too, comes in some of the stand-up routines… the plaintive image of him searching PornHub for ‘romance’ says so much.

‘I love drugs,’ Sharp tells us at one point, although his ramshackle show probably said it before he did. But although the presentation careers wildly around, it’s endemic of the idea of a man at the centre of a crazy world. While he's only adding to that craziness, Sharp’s barely-successful attempts not to be overwhelmed by it all is essentially endearing, and often funny.

Review date: 9 Apr 2015
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett