JOSH SHARP: TA-DA!
Soho Theatre
★★★★★
“honest, heartfelt and strikingly inventive”
Josh Sharp welcomes us to his one-man show with a cascade of hellos and a vibrant energy that fills the entire theatre. His mission is immediately clear: to create a show in which he can share 2,000 slides in real time. He even proves that he is operating the clicker himself, having memorised every single slide to make this theatrical feat possible. Two thousand slides means delivering one every 2.25 seconds. Maintaining that relentless rhythm — a long PowerPoint presentation projected across a vast screen, with set design by Meredith Ries — while landing moments of absolute truth and joy is no small task. It is a high-wire act of precision and vulnerability.
Directed by Sam Pinkleton, ta-da! is honest, heartfelt and strikingly inventive. You don’t quite know what you’re in for or what the show is truly about until the very end. Yet you are completely held: by the jokes, by the momentum and by flashes of raw truthfulness. Sharp keeps us with him every second, sharing intimate moments from his life: the story of coming out, tender and innocent first encounters with his own body, and wilder, more chaotic intimacies with others.
There is deep playfulness here, but beneath the stories of his gay identity, love and sexual encounters lies an awareness of privilege and self-reflection. The narratives are woven with honesty and immediacy, grounded firmly in the present. Sharp’s London debut speaks vividly of his life in New York, yet it resonates locally, tying into London’s reality and filling the audience with laughter and recognition.
The use of the presentation format is astonishingly inventive. Words generate images; images trigger stories; and every few seconds a new world is built before our eyes. Each slide becomes a fleeting but fully lived moment, shared and appreciated before it vanishes.
As we travel through these 2,000 slides, Sharp, alongside his childhood magician alter ego, repeatedly “tricks” us into his world. Are we listening to the real Josh, the performer or the magician? The line blurs constantly. But we remain captivated, willingly following every twist in his train of thought.
We learn about his family and the forces that shaped him, far beyond his gay identity. We learn who helped him become who he is. The show expands outward from identity into humanity.
It is, ultimately, a journey, much like meeting someone new. You do not know where the encounter will lead. But if you love them, or if they offer themselves with honesty and openness, you follow. You stay. That is what ta-da! does: you fall in love with it and want to follow every beat to the end, even when you don’t fully know where it is taking you.
ta-da! is a genuine piece of theatre that leaves you inspired and filled with joy. Not because it tells a story that has never been told before, but because it tells it with singular humanity. You witness an honest individual doing the best they can with the time they are given. And that, in Sharp’s words, is living. That is “slaying.”
JOSH SHARP: TA-DA!
Soho Theatre
Reviewed on 12th February 2026
by Nasia Ntalla
Photography by Emilio Madrid
