Domestic Goddi 2: How to Cope - Fringe 2009
Live Review

Domestic Goddi is the perfect show – if you want to see two proficient character actresses perform their audition showreel. If you want something funnier than a range of broadly-sketched characters in search of a punchline, look elsewhere.

Take, for example, the two schoolgirls who talk in typical vacuous vocab: ‘OMG, this is literally *such* an obvious sketch, *So* random. I’m just like whatever …’

That’s all they do, until they drown in under their own tide of adjectival slurry. All very well-observed, but where’s the twist? Trouble is, that’s actually one of the better sketches in their repertoire.

Helen O'Brien (who co-wrote the show with Rosie Wilkinson) and Genivieve Swallow are keen to display all their talents, though, especially their ear for an accent. Every character has one. The preachy environmental teacher is Australian, the folk singer is Irish, there’s an au pair from that vague mid-European place comedy writers always refer to vaguely as ‘in my country…’ a couple of Yorkshirewomen, the posh Southerners. Never mind the gags, feel the range.

All act to type, so the au pair is sex-crazed; two well-to-do passive-aggressive yummy mummies bicker competitively about how specially gifted their children are; the historical re-enactor is a dreary middle-manager with a crushingly dull life. Every one of these characters you’ve seen before, sometimes quite literally: there’s a spoof South American advert here that seems like a direct lift from the Fast Show’s Channel 9 News – just not as good.

With exuberance and fun, such broad stereotypes could possibly work, but there’s a very businesslike atmosphere to Domestic Goddi, with sketches all very deliberately ‘performed’ but with bland personality.

Just two scenes are particularly funny: the drug deal carried out in the patois of the ghetto, but the accent of the Yorkshire Moors – and an audio job advert that fills a gap while the duo change, which has a nice twist. But they could drop into almost any sketch show, there’s nothing distinctively ‘Domestic Goddi’ about them.

At prices of up to £9.50 for a performance that ran for just 39 minutes, this is the sort of Fringe show vulnerable to recessionary pressures. Few would probably mourn it.