Jude Perl Tries To Finish A Sentence

Jude Perl is perhaps one of the best musical comedians working in Melbourne right now. I doubt I’m changing any hearts and minds by identifying that fact: it seems a foregone conclusion. Her songwriting is endlessly clever and evocative, her voice electrifying, and her stage presence full of an anxious charm that makes her impossible not to like.

Jude Perl Tries To Finish A Sentence is a meditation on identity and conviction. This is a show that I’m tempted to see a second time – if only because there were times that I felt I lost the thematic thread, and I’m desperate to know whether that was a fault of my own not-paying-attention, or whether there was a layer of murkiness in show’s thematic delivery. In either case – this show works both as a cohesive set of chapters building to a thematic conclusion, and as a more loosely connected family of sketches and songs. Highlights of this show included an impassioned musical defence of a controversial 90’s sitcom that elicited some of the night’s best audience reactions, and a plot following Perl’s time as a wedding singer at a hilariously messy reception. 

I’m always wary of comparing performers, and perhaps this comparison is tired – but Perl truly feels like a successor to the joke-telling, piano-playing, anxiety-fuelled juggernaut that is American comedian Bo Burnham. I make this comparison only to encourage all of my friends who I know consistently revisit Burnham’s work online to please broaden your horizons. Do yourself a favour by going to see Jude Perl: you won’t regret it, and you might just discover a new favourite performer.