Gavin & Gavin: It’s A Long Road That Doesn’t Have A Bend
Note: This review is from 2008
Review by Steve Bennett
It's the first time I've seen Edinburgh veterans Loretta and Sharon Gavin, and it won't be the last. I don't know where else you'd put a show like this outside of a festival, but there's a chatty, unsentimental warmth to what they do.Two sisters bantering doesn'tsound like it's going to be much, but they are bother skilled performers and actresses, with a sharp eye for character observation. It is the antithesis of the kind of Angela's Ashes/Magdalen Sisters misery memoir, having had a chirpy London-Irish upbringing in a warmly chaotic house, with summer visits to Ireland to ‘Celt up’.
You really want to be standing up with a drink in your hand at a bar with these girls, they're infectious fun, tell great anecdotes and really bring their family characters alive. Ma, Da, possibly gay husband Guy and the fierce Irish uncles are all there.
At some points there are flashes of Father Ted, at others it's Samuel Beckett and Sean O'Casey in their style, and it all clips along at a terrific lick, without being irritatingly hyper.
The weak spots occur when they depart from reality and get into would be comic sexual material or reprise a sketch from their childhood, when called upon to do a turn, which is so far away from their natural easy style as to be a bit mystifying, but the moments are gone so quickly that you can forgive these small dropped clangers.
Enjoyable, it's like catching up with a couple of good friends you haven't seen for a while who'll be sure to give a lively account of themselves.
Reviewed by: Julia Chamberlain
Review date: 1 Jan 2008
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
