Melbourne International Comedy Festival review

Gently spoken Sashi Perera offers a fascinating journey thought the colonial history of Sri Lanka, why society there still holds white people in such esteem and her experiences with IVF.

Yet while this thoughtful, intelligent comedian has the audience hanging on her every carefully-chosen word, the show rarely, if ever, goes beyond mildly funny. There are plenty of wry smiles, a few isolated outbursts of titters, but only very occasionally a more substantial laugh.

The former lawyer even randomly sings a couple of songs, entirely earnestly – but  anyone who’s been raised on Alan Partridge will find it impossible to hear the Knowing Me Knowing You ‘a-ha’s and get the same note of sincerity she was seeking.

The first part of the hour concerns a trip she took with her white husband Charles to her native Sri Lanka last year, after spending almost all of her life in Australia. She’d hoped it would be a place where she could finally be seen just a person, not a person of colour, but it was not to be. The reactions to them as a couple are eye-opening.

Her curiosity about the world is appealing and she has a warm, calm, delivery that brings the room to her. Yet while there is wit to her storytelling, it is always of the gentlest sort, very underpowered for a comedy festival hour.

The second part of the show revolves around the pair being childless, and she sees an unbridgeable divide between couples who do and do not have children - set up with a clunky analogy where she imagines a friend getting a ‘goat’ who takes over every aspect of her life. The goat is a baby, do you see?

She feels the pressure to conform - and puts a lot of it on herself - which leads her to IVF when natural efforts prove fruitless. Again the personal story is engagingly told, and we are backing the couple every step of the way. Again, though, it is not all that funny.

And the big build-up as to whether couples should have children or not is eventually resolved into: ‘Depends. You do you’ - which would surely have been the starting positing for all but the most judgmental of people anyway. 

If you’re in the market for a sensitive, smart and thoughtful storytelling show, Perera delivers. If you want rolling laughs, however, Pear Tree does not bear fruit.

• Sashi Perera: Pear Tree is on at ACMI at 7.30pm (6.30pm Sundays) until April 19. Extra show at 2.30pm on Sunday at Melbourne Town Hall.

Review date: 17 Apr 2026
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Melbourne International Comedy Festival