Review by Steve Bennett

Last year, the Segue Sisters were every compilation show’s favourite guest; their melodious three-part harmony singing adding variety to many a bill. Now they’re striking out on their own… but how to ensure their debut is more than just one song after another?

The solution is to write a play, of sorts, that sees our heroines incarcerated for ‘contempt for music’ in a jail whose walls are as flimsy as this plot device. While locked up, they plan escape, go slowly mad, and reference the Shawshank Redemption rather a lot.

That it’s all rather cheap and cheesy is embraced by the Sisters – aka Carrie Marx, Charlotte Jo Hanbury and Kerrie Fairclough – a sort of female version of The Goodies, albeit with less facial hair, who make a virtue of any quality shortfalls by treating everything in a childish, silly way.

Marx is the nominal alpha-female, but only in the same way Oliver Hardy was the alpha-male in his films; Hanbury the nymphomaniacal foil, and Fairclough the put-upon mute who only talks to the hand, literally. A guest comedian provides the voice of the harsh warden, Martha Biff, whose name might give a hint to the mystery contributor.

The comedy is a bit stop-start, and not just in the way that it’s merely grouting for the musical numbers. Their appeal is sometimes dissipated because of misfiring timing, although other links – usually the more daft physical ones – work with a Knockabout charm, if you don’t take it all too seriously.

Despite these trappings, the show remains all about the singing, and in this the Segue Sisters have certainly carved a niche. They start with the genre’s most familiar track, Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy, but the rest of their output comprises witty reworkings of more modern tunes. Eighties power rock proves a particularly fertile period, with the likes of Alice Cooper’s Poison, Aerosmith/Run DMC’s Walk This Way and Guns N’ Roses Sweet Child o' Mine among those getting the Segue treatment.

Their approach to comedy is just as irreverent, so for a slice of meaningless nonsense interspersed with some jaunty tunes, these are your girls.

Review date: 7 Aug 2011
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett