ta-da!
If ever a production cried out for unapologetically gay theatre criticism, it's this one...
Part of me wanted to begin this review like a mediocre personal statement on a college application: “Webster’s Dictionary defines ‘theatre’…”
Because while watching Josh Sharp’s ta-da!, for the second time in recent history—the first being at Kip Williams’s video-heavy adaptation of The Picture of Dorian Gray with Sarah Snook—I found myself at a one-person show asking those highly undergraduate questions, “Is this theatre? What is theatre?”
It’s not that I was bored. Both productions offered plenty of stimulation. However, each was packaged like traditional theatre while eschewing its norms.
In the case of ta-da!, perhaps the most significant norm that’s rejected is the conceit of spontaneity. The marketing materials describe it as “a one-man comedy show inside of a manic 2,000 slide PowerPoint.” As writer-comedian-the-multihyphenate-could-continue Sharp tells us early on, being tethered to that presentation means everything has been deliberately planned…but, he soon argues, everything is always planned in standup comedy; any sense of improvisation is an illusion. The same could be said of traditional theatre—what unfolds in front of us is scripted and rehearsed, yet we are supposed to believe that it’s all happening for the first time.
Sharp hilariously dismantles this pretense with such rapid-fire and glib delivery that we don’t even realize he’s laying the groundwork for the evening’s weightiest themes: the importance of living authentically, and using our limited time deliberately. His monologue is peppered with meta acknowledgments (“here is my act two turn”) that prevent us from ever forgetting that we’re watching a performance without ever explicitly stating why it’s so important for us to remember. He thus crafts a piece that’s more cerebral and theatrical than most standup, but more transparent and self-referential than most theatre.
Despite my very heady description, ta-da! is hysterically funny, especially in its first half. Previously, I was only aware of Sharp because of Dicks: The Musical, which he co-wrote and stars in. If that title strikes you as off-putting, you’re not likely to enjoy either the film or this play. The humor in both is intentionally stupid, gleefully vulgar, and super gay. Their relentlessly fast pace is reminiscent of Tina Fey’s brand of comedy: an article in The Atlantic once calculated an average of 7.44 jokes per minute on 30 Rock; the desire to catch them all by rewinding and re-watching has turned the low-rated but critically acclaimed sitcom into a juggernaut of the streaming era. Here, the pace is inextricable from Sharp’s preoccupation with time, which relates not only to the play’s most serious themes, but also the PowerPoint that provides its structure; he even tells us that he was required to “memorize a slide every 2.4 seconds.”
In the second half, though there are still plenty of laughs, Sharp ventures into more solemn territory, successfully bringing an unexpected amount of heart to the evening. The poignance of his storytelling around mortality is yet another aspect of the piece that makes it feel more like theatre than standup. At the same time, we never lose his unique voice, which is a credit to Sharp and his director.
“And who is that director?” you may ask. Why, it’s none other than Sam Pinkleton, hot off his Tony win for Oh, Mary! Taken together, these two plays—along with 2022’s You Will Get Sick and 2016’s Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812, which Pinkleton respectively directed and choreographed—suggest a brand of Pinkleton’s own is emerging. He has developed a pattern of working within the confines of familiar forms, but pushing them to their edges. There is something subversive, if not outright transgressive, about his staging, which often includes elements of surprise (the breaking of the proscenium in The Great Comet, the special effects in You Will Get Sick, the final scene in Oh, Mary!, a card trick in ta-da!) and a degree of irreverence that might not naturally be associated with the genre in which he’s working (the Broadway musical, the intimate play, the one-person show). He is one of our most exciting rising talents, and has a point-of-view as a director that is as distinct as Sharp’s is as a writer.
It’s interesting that the more I thought about Williams’s Dorian Gray, the less I liked it, and the less I felt it earned the right to be called “theatre,” because the opposite is true of ta-da!. I left the Greenwich House Theater riding high on the raucous laughter Sharp elicited, but unsure about the more substantive aspects of the play. However, in the intervening days, the latter bits kept replaying in my mind. I’ve come to see more connections between the play’s different sections, and admire how much intelligence stealthily underpins all the stupidity. Provoking so much laughter while also exploring some of life’s biggest questions feels like a magic trick worthy of the play’s title.
the not-a-bottom line
🌈🌈🌈🌈 (out of five)1
a guide to ticket-buying
With my TDF membership, I got three seats in the front row of the mezzanine on a Friday night for ~$40/each.
The Greenwich House Theater is not a large space, and the slides are gigantic, so you’re basically guaranteed decent sightlines wherever you’re seated.
That being said, as someone who’s on the petite side, a great perk of sitting in the front row of the mezz was that I was still fairly close without having to worry about anyone tall sitting in front of me.
a key to the pictures
Sharp has discussed some of ta-da!’s content in various interviews, essentially doing bits of material from the show.
If you want to gauge whether this show is for you but avoid spoilers, the best predictor would likely be renting Dicks: The Musical, which is available on all the usual streaming platforms, including Prime and Fandango at Home
When this review was originally published, I rated ta-da! 🌈🌈🌈½. As noted in my review of Color Theories, upon returning to see ta-da! a second time, I appreciated it even more and thus increased its rating.
Well written, Sir! A delight to read you!
This sounds like a show you would see at The Edinburgh Fringe Festival - which I say with love. I saw so many wonderful, creative shows there that stretched the boundary of what theater is or could be.