In its fourth year at The Melbourne Comedy Festival, The 5:30 Show is an epic collaborative work staring Harris Stuckey, Danny and Andrew Bensley, Josh Glass, James McMahon and of course, Shahed Sharify. Tackling the tough questions first, Shahed hesitantly reveals, “Yes, it’s true – every year we have a 4:30 show on Sunday.”
“We all have quite different styles,” he says. “I tend to tell a lot of shorter jokes with an angry tone, a critic of society type edge, there’s personal story telling, Danny and Andrew do quite a bit of that, there’s some surreal and absurdist humour that Josh and James do and Harris is observational. It’s a general comedy showcase. Essentially, we are all doing our stand-up comedy sets, but in-between we do a collaboration or a small sketch, just to vary things up.”
In particular, Shahed is said to turn towards subtle societal conventions that make us naturally humorous and well, human. “You don’t want to be talking about hipster culture and chai lattes all the time,” he explains. “Enough people do that already. There’s such a rich breadth of human experience that you can draw on that there’s no need to stick to trendy stuff.”
“I do a critique of society. Recently, I’ve been this bit about how hard people try to relate to each other, desperate for acceptance. It makes you say and do ridiculous things. I do it too but for instance, I was at the physio and he looked at my form and said ‘Shahed – where’s that from?’ I said ‘It’s from Iran’ and he said ‘Oh yeah, our new intern is from Bosnia’. We have a tendency to quickly find a common point of interest, even though it’s so far removed. ”
Remarkably, the tight-knit group rarely find themselves overlapping their material, ensuring the showcase is dynamic, diverse and direct, just like its featured talent. “We go to a bunch of gigs through the year – we do our own sets and we have our separate writing process so we know what each other’s material is,” says Shahed. “If you work with people throughout the year then you tend to find your own niche. Obviously we have an MC throughout the night, the person that loves banter with the audience and the one’s that the biggest attention seeker – it’s usually me,” he laughs.
Clearly committed to comedy, the six young stand-ups provide a space for those looking for a fresh, local spin on society with an inexpensive price tag. “We aim to be the best value show in Melbourne and provide the most amount of laughs for cheap as chips tickets, like it’s $15 – you’d struggle to get anything that cheap.”
By Phoebe Robertson
VENUE: Melb Town Hall – Backstage Room
Cnr Swanston & Collins Sts, Melbourne
DATES: March 24 – April 17
TIMES: 5.30pm (except Sunday 4.30pm)
TICKETS: $12 – $15
