Dean Eizenberg’s Sell Out is a strange little show, sure to please a select few, but just as sure to confuse the wider audience that ‘selling out’ would imply.
Most of the show is just Dean jumping from joke to joke without segue. The jokes are a mainly just quick quips, most not being more than a sentence or two. There are some big laughs, but with the rapid pace jokes aren’t given any time to breath, stifling some of the humour as the next joke comes in. Dean’s deadpan manner and cold-addled voice prevent the show from building too much momentum, and when laughs do build, Dean is more than happy to sabotage them with purposefully off material.
Dean’s comedy isn’t really just about the jokes. He can be most directly compared to Nick Sun, but Dean doesn’t seem to quite know exactly where he wants to pitch himself yet. While Nick seems to want to push his audiences regardless of response, Dean still self-consciously looks for constant audience approval. While often dropping out into morbidness or disdain for the audience, there’s always the constant stream of one-liners that keeps the structure of a comedy show intact. The mainly older audience appeared to latch onto that structure and treat the show merely as a series of jokes, and gave Dean very little to feed back from, destroying the confidence he needed to push the show forward. Perhaps stepping further from the familiarity of the joke structure more often would have allowed the audience greater insight as to the goals of the show.
This is not a typical festival show, and it’s entirely possible to sit through with barely a laugh, but it’s still somehow oddly compelling. Dean would be well served to try and push himself further – perhaps in the more forgiving confines of the Fringe Festival. This is a show with a very limited audience, but if you’ve seen Nick Sun and still need a further anti-comedy fix, then Dean’s your man.
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