Review by Steve Bennett

This newish female double act have a few inventive comic ideas, and a deft touch when it comes to performing them, but they fall short of what's needed to sustain a full-length show that never quite gels into a substantial whole.

They aim for a disjointed weirdness, the whole performance supposedly happening in the minds of the audience; a 'hallucipeformination', as the mellifluous voiceover has it. However, the surreal theme too often seems a cop-out for thin jokes, even if the best sketches prove the duo are capable of more than this.

Among the finest creations are the mystic gurus, banging together saucepan lids, striking yogic stances and posing zen-like questions that prove little more than silly childhood brainteasers, or even plots from Back To The Future. A bitchy Q&A session with a luvvie repertory actress and a deranged stalker with a pie for a friend is another highlight, thanks to the blatant antagonism between the characters.

Between these twin pillars, though, there's an over-reliance on the intrinsic hilarity of a grating silly voice. The recurring characters of the suicidal clown and her tragedian sidekick don't contribute much, except for the odd line in a good news-bad news exchange of the kind that's normally an improvisation game, rather than scripted.

Similarly, the spoof country singer or the pathetic office worker desperately trying to be zany and interesting with the help of penis-shaped deely-boppers provide little that's new, being roughly-sketched cartoons where others have created fully-fledged characters in the same mould.

There's about ten minutes of sly, silly and original humour in this hour, which might prove enough to build on for the future. But for now, it's too slight by a long chalk.

Review date: 1 Jan 2004
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett