At 6pm sharp, the announcement local fans despair of each evening – "For Victorian viewers, it is time for you to leave us now" – interrupted coverage of Nikolay Davydenko's super-charged match against the best player in the world, Roger Federer.
It is also sharp and funny, with humour and despair mashed in together.
In sharp contrast to his works of despair, he designed a series of quirky abstract sculptures called "Lunars".
With razor-sharp understanding of our modern life's despair and fragmentation, he eloquently left question marks over the final acts of every one of his plays.
Big and meaty, the show is full of sharp observations, small revelations, and not a little despair.
His humor is compassionate and tender but offers no exit — his wistful sweetness rapidly crystallizes to the sharp corners and cutting edges of exasperation, derision, and despair.
In a short appearance on John Gambling's morning radio show on WABC, Mr. Bloomberg suggested that "thoughtless despair" was contributing to the recent and sharp declines in the stock market, and suggested that listeners should buy equities.
But their beliefs, their anger and despair, and the ease with which they acquired weapons, all send sharp messages.
But, although the writing is often sharp and fizzy, I long for Stenham to move beyond the world of privileged despair.
"Sharp Was the River Bending" is lively and bucolic, but there's an undercurrent of despair — the river is the Mississippi, and war is never far from its banks.
In her initial despair, she stabbed herself with a butter knife and smashed her head on the sharp corner of the headboard of the bed.
