Review by Marina Funcasta

Monkey Barrel Comedy

Soresi is a daring performer: waltzing onto the stage, facing nearly a hundred nodding heads sipping from their plastic pint cups, his charisma wins us over almost immediately. To be sure, his consecutive sell-out shows are evidence enough of his success. Whether this energy is maintained throughout, however, is harder to assure.

He starts off strong, complaining about his girlfriend, whom he endearingly calls “women”, only to somehow shift to cancel culture. He approaches these subjects with a bloating gusto, increasing in volume with every controversial remark. Culminating in a final call and response joke about the size of his dad’s penis, safe to say sometimes Soresi could benefit from quieter moments.

This said, his pacing is particularly effective. A confident performer, he takes his time, both with his jokes and audience interaction. This, for me, is where Soresi’s talent really pierced through his audacious persona: in a sequence on ADHD and self-diagnosis, Soresi tugged on some responsive audience members in a subtle but edifying exchange. He is aware of his perceivers and approaching them with a harsh edge. Soresi holds his weight. Coming up with teasing remarks off the cuff, I laughed out loud for the first time during the show, which was now reaching the halfway mark.

This may well be a reflection of my own personal stubbornness when it comes to comedy at the Fringe, but either way this made the second half of the show a lot smoother for me. Touching less politically contentious categories, such as AI, paints a bleak picture of the future, using the Trojan Horse of laughter to his benefit. In fact, this seems a fitting way of describing his sense of humour more generally: loud, vivacious, prodding comedy which hides a deep trepidation about the state of our world, and its future, within.

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