Review: A Marriage of Inconvenience, Etcetera Theatre

Abi Sharp and Harsh Thakar first met at a stand-up comedy course four years ago. They both work in tech during the day and are both in the LGBTQI+ community. Whilst their similarities make for a good reason to come together to make a play about the struggles of modern dating life in their thirties, their different styles give this show a lot of variety and a little sprinkle of magic. A Marriage of Inconvenience, their split-bill production at Camden Fringe, proves that they are a successful match.
The show is based around the idea that they have agreed that, should neither find lasting love by the age of 40, they will simply marry each other instead. Before resorting to their sexless lavender marriage, however, each gets half an hour to explore the romantic disasters that might eventually drive them towards it.
After a quick opening song from both of them, Harsh starts with a traditional stand-up set, delving deeply into his own life. Originally from India but now a British citizen, he finds plenty of comedy in the process of acquiring British nationality. However, some of his richest material comes from his difficulty in recognising romantic signals and, in particular, working out whether men are actually flirting with him. He uses audience involvement here to hilarious effect – we have to raise our hands at the precise moment in his story when we think the guy in the story is flirting with him, and the differences in responses unearth a hearty laugh. The highlight of his set is when he compares roles in his extended family with senior team members in a tech start-up. Sharp and original, this proves that he has something fresh and funny to offer.
Nevertheless, his storytelling would benefit from a little more polish. There is a substantial amount of material to remember and, occasionally, one can almost see him mentally searching for the next paragraph. He never actually loses his thread, but comedy depends so heavily on rhythm and confidence that these tiny pauses momentarily loosen his grip on the room.
Sharp, meanwhile, arrives with a piano and considerably greater assurance. She plays standing up, possesses a beautiful singing voice and has persuaded Harsh into jointly opening and closing the show in song, something he participates in gamely, if not always entirely comfortably.
Her material is gleefully explicit and impressively wide-ranging. Subjects include reasons for crying on public transport, a boyfriend disconcertingly silent during sex and a gloriously silly Les Misérables-inspired number in which the crime in question becomes not possessing a television licence. Like Harsh’s anecdote about his family’s roles, bringing such wildly disparate ideas together and making them work demonstrates real promise.
Sharp clearly understands how to identify the absurdities in her own life that an audience will recognise in theirs, and her easy rapport with the room makes her an enormously engaging performer. There is, though, still room to push the songs further. Funny songs offer the luxury of making almost every line either a punchline or a carefully constructed step towards one. Occasionally a rhyme feels more functional than funny. Writing more of her own music (of which, I believe, there is already some) will allow her to really pack in the punchlines.
These are refinements rather than fundamental problems. Sharp and Thakar are very different comics, but that contrast is precisely what makes A Marriage of Inconvenience work. What initially looks like an odd coupling becomes an hour of warm, easy and extremely relatable laughs. Perhaps that marriage pact isn’t such a bad idea after all.

Written and performed by Abi Sharp and Harsh Thakar

A Marriage of Inconvenience plays again at the Etcetera Theatre on Saturday 22 August.