Review: Ta-Da! Goes From Accidental Hand Jobs to Quantum Immortality in 2,000 PowerPoint Slides

Ever since he was a kid, comedian Josh Sharp wanted to be a magician. He wasn’t what you’d call a natural with the card tricks, but he made up for it with chutzpah and a flair for dramatic entrances, coming into a room and blurting out “Ta-Da!”—which was one way of screaming out to the world, “Hi there, I’m gay.”

Anyone who has seen Sharp in the film Dicks: The Musical, which he co-wrote, knows that he is gay, and in his new show ta-da! (now running at the Greenwich House Theater) he comes off as extremely friendly too, even maniacally so. Holding a small clicker in one hand, he spends the first couple minutes welcoming us. “Hi. Hello. What’s up? How are you? Hi, hello, hi!,” he says rapid-fire as he clicks his clicker, every word appearing on a large, mauve-bordered screen behind him (scenic design by Meredith Ries and lighting by Cha See).

“Welcome to whatever the fuck this is,” he says, reading our minds, or at least seeming to. It’s a good first trick in a solo show that explodes the idea of what stand-up can be, should be, is. Part hilarious send-up of the form and part real magic act (wait until the end), ta-da! is one of the most hilariously innovative and astutely performed solo comedy shows I’ve ever seen.

For one thing, I’ve never been to a stand-up performance where reading was this much a part of the experience (Stivo Arnoczy is co-video designer). “I have for you tonight 2,000 slides,” he says. And when he says 2,000, he means that exactly. A stickler for numbers (he used to be an SAT math tutor), he tells us that to get through that many slides in 80 minutes he has to click his clicker every 2.4 seconds. But why bother with all that?

“Cause here’s the thing,” he says, reading our minds again. “Stand-up is bullshit.” And we’re quickly convinced of this when he explains that comedians like to give the impression that their acts are casual and spontaneous. But Sharp tells us that he has memorized every word, even down to the “crowd work.” No, darlings, this is theater—or rather theatre, two special slides emphasizing the “r-e” spelling so there’s no confusion (artwork and font designs by Teddy Blanks, CHIPS).

Sharp, however, has more to do in this show than just disabuse us of our illusions about comedy. He delves into some intense and intimate stories about himself, like waiting until he was 18 to masturbate for the first time, getting an “accidental” hand job from a masseur, and coming out as gay at 22 when his mother gently bullied him out of the closet.

The last of these stories marks a change in the tone of the show (brilliantly helmed by Sam Pinkleton, who just won a Best Director Tony for Oh, Mary!). “This is the Act Two turn of the show,” Sharp says. “It’s. Giving. Pathos.” The screen goes blank as Sharp discusses his mother’s battle with ovarian cancer, his father’s incredible love, and the drug that was “accidentally” given to her which extended her life long past her original prognosis. It’s a moving tribute that he infuses with a levity that we know his mother would have liked.

Sharp saves his headiest topic for the end, which is a mind-blowing discussion of the famous Schrödinger’s cat thought experiment, a quick rundown of basic quantum mechanics, and how those things relate to a near-death experience he had when he almost drowned in the ocean and lost 40 minutes of consciousness. Even if quantum physics isn’t in your wheelhouse, Sharp captivates us as he tries to make meaning out of “accidents,” his show, and, maybe, life.

It comes together in a final magic act (created by Skylar Fox) that I won’t reveal here—but I will say that Sharp pulls off this card trick spectacularly. “Never believe a magician when they tell you they fucked up,” he says at the top of the show. So I was suspicious when he seemed nervous about messing up this last bit: “I don’t want anyone going to fucking TheaterMania and giving me a one star review because they couldn’t see the gay guy’s card.” We don’t use star ratings in our reviews here, not usually anyway. But in this case, I’ll make an exception.

★ ★ ★ ★ ★