Review: Verity Sharpe: Wet Landlord’s Dream, Assembly Bristo Square

Verity Sharpe has a damp patch on their ceiling. It’s so bad that it’s raining inside the property. The problem is Sharpe’s letting agent is not answering any of their messages, so instead, they must watch as the damp patch slowly consumes the ceiling.  

Wet Landlord’s Dream is Sharpe’s riff on the housing crisis facing young people today. Anyone who has ever rented in London will nod knowingly at many of their thoughts. But thankfully the show is not just another moan about the cost of a broom cupboard under the stairs, which the landlord describes as desirable. Because let’s be honest, we’re exhausted by that genre of comedy. We know renting is farcical, especially in the capital; now give us something else. 

And Sharpe does just that. The show is part stand-up, part poetry recital. The latter is very much where they come fully alive; here their voice lifts up, and you sense they are much more confident being behind the mic stand with just the single spotlight on their face as they deliver amusing ditties on guardianships and human excrement. The energy seems to drop when they return to the stand-up elements of the show, maybe because the six-strong audience isn’t giving much energy back (I’m as guilty as any for this; I’m a terrible audience member when you need me to respond, especially given this is the last of my 43 reviews in a very busy week! Sorry about that.) But even so, it’s a learning curve that all good comics need to go through; they all need to learn how to get the most out of a lowlow-energydience. 

Saying that, when Sharpe leans into full weirdness, the stand-up is at its best. An early story of a house full of cats and ghosts works well because of this oddness. Even as they talk about the strange woman showing them around, you wonder if Sharpe is still the weirder one in the room. And that includes the ghosts. Similarly, their paintings of things seen in some of the flats viewed suggest there is something not quite right in that head! More of this could really bring the show alive further.

As this show develops, you hope that Sharpe adds more of the poetry and weirdness into the mix, along with learning how to find energy from a late Sunday night fringe audience. Once they do, maybe they will be able to afford to move to somewhere without such a damp patch above their head.

Written by Verity Sharpe

Wet Landlord’s Dream has completed its run at Assembly Bristo Square as part of the Edinburgh Fringe