Comic thinking outside the box Comedian, Brent Thorpe in Surry Hills. Picture: Katrina Tepper Source: The Daily Telegraph BRENT Thorpe's been getting a bit of a shock of late. And it seems to happen every time the Sydney-based actor and stand-up comedian turns on the telly. "People are getting younger and younger, every time I turn on X Factor, Australia's Got Talent or whatever, they look five years old, how do I compete with that?" he says. It got Thorpe into a reflective mode and his one-man Mardi Gras Festival show Too Old For TV is the result. "It's part stand-up, part storytelling, part dramatic monologue, there are all these elements in it, it is funny but there are moments when it's not," he says. The genesis of the work lies in two events: Thorpe turning 50 and the rise of Facebook and his subsequent reconnection to many of the performers he grew up with in the late 1970s and '80s. Back then, being gay was literally illegal, being a drag queen an open invitation to harassment and HIV-AIDS had begun to devastate the gay community. The nature of performance has changed as a result, and it's given Thorpe pause for thought. "A lot of the stuff looks the same now and I remember when it wasn't like that, and I wanted to talk about that," he says. I've seen the inner west really change, so I talk about that and all those shows and how it all informed me. The Lybrary Bar (formerly Shannon Hotel), Abercrombie St, Chippendale; February 15-16 and 21-22, $20, 1300 438 849, moshtix.com.au