Josh Sharp: Ta-da! Review – 2000 slides and ‘little massages’ in a show full of laughter | comedy

TTwo modern stand-ups vie for supremacy in Josh Sharp’s off-Broadway import Ta Da! One is a comedy PowerPoint. The other is humor extracted from personal trauma. At first, form is put before content, as Sharp goes wild with a clicker, displaying his introductory set of “Hello”, “Hello” and “Hello” in huge letters on an upstairs screen. He tells us there will be 2,000 slides in this 75-minute presentation, and they’ll explain that every beat (despite appearance) is written and predestined.

And so the stage is set for the technical prowess of the former child magician – but also some revelations as to why such a frenetic method of presentation is appropriate for the story Sharpe has to tell. Is it to do with his generation’s habit of displaying their entertainment in doubles? He hints that it might be, and then moves on. What we get instead is this Southerner-turned-New Yorker’s coming-of-age story, which involves his mother’s advanced cancer and, indirectly, his watery near-death experience a few years ago.

Do these two performances combine satisfactorily into a cohesive whole? Sharpe throws himself into this challenge, drawing on Schrödinger’s cat and the theory of quantum immortality to support his exploration of life and death (or on stage and on screen) simultaneously. In a show that is forever alert to its status as a confessional performance (“theatre with replay,” as he puts it), he also acknowledges that all this incredible technology is designed to obscure the cliché of talking about parental bereavement and queer self-discovery on stage.

For me, the constant emphasis, echo, and on-screen background chat distract from what’s most important in Sharp’s story, and even keep it at a distance. But this tale still packs a punch, and its narrator is an endearing presence throughout. There are self-contained set pieces (about urban umbrella use and “massage hot dogs”), amusingly arch Gen Z tropes and a touching tenderness toward his mother and father. And if the PowerPoint gimmicks and emotional rites of passage can feel as if they’re pulling in different directions – well, the combination (theatrical, super sharp slideshows, big laughs, and a poignant story) is still a pretty big bang for your buck.