^{Picture: Mindy Tucker}

The confessional stand-up routine is a curious beast, demanding that an audience shifts gears from serious to funny with whiplash-inducing regularity. It requires an adept storyteller and an even better joke-writer to negotiate these sharky waters, two elements that are under-par in My Dad Isn’t Danny DeVito, which boasts a strong throughline but fails to raise more than a smile.

It's a problem exacerbated by the fact that Anthony DeVito, unlike many comedy performers at the Fringe, offers a very fresh perspective. From an Italian-American background, his show unpicks the alarming discovery that his estranged father was a ‘made man’ in the mob. Along the way he conflates his emotional failings with his violent family ties, mirroring situations in his life with the relationship between his mother and her ex-husband. It’s an approach that vacillates between emotionally affecting to nakedly contrived, an effect not helped by a vague ending that fails to reach a satisfying climax. 

Interspersed between the occasionally shocking revelations surrounding DeVito’s father are jokes that almost never land. From the dude-bro doctor who bookends the story to observations about masculinity in the Italian-American world, there’s a lack of nuance and originality to DeVito’s humour that diminishes the darker textures of his autobiographical tale. Pulling punches is an understandable instinct in a story as close to home as this, but it does little to improve an underwhelming, if sporadically interesting hour. 

Just The Tonic At The Mash House, until 28 August, 7.30pm.