Cardinal Sins

Standing on stage with a beer in his hand, Frank Hampster looks like a regular comedian, but this is far from a normal comedy show.

Hampster grew up in Ballarat in the '70s and '80s and went to St Patrick's College, where he was George Pell's altar boy. It was for that reason that he was recently called to testify before the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. After breaking the silence there, he acknowledged the sexual abuse that he had suffered at the hand of the priests.

A pending court case means he's had to rewrite some elements of the show, but in Cardinal Sins he talks about his childhood experiences as well as exploring the reasons paedophilia flourishes in the Catholic Church. Hampster is searching for answers, as well as a way to stop it from ever happening again.

He clearly uses humour as a coping mechanism and this is not just his story — it is his catharsis. There are laughs, but at many points Cardinal Sins is nothing short of heartbreaking. Often the two co-exist, as when he takes some of questions put to priests by the Royal Commission and their subsequent answers and sets them to music.

The show is stuffed with so much information that sometimes the facts and figures fly out too fast to follow. But this is clearly an important topic and Hampster wants to educate and engage as many people as possible. Indeed, once the show is over he invites us all to participate in a question and answer session and one gets the feeling he could talk about this forever.

Hampster is easily sidetracked as he moves through this intensely personal material and Cardinal Sins is not the slickest, most polished show you will see all Fringe. Instead, it's intensely personal, moving and well worth seeing.