Review by Steve Bennett

The low tone is set with their opening act, a charmless male stripper whose claim to fame, apparently, is that he was visibly aroused on the Australian Big Brother. Presumably the choice of a stripper is to be turn the tables on the comics’ only claim to fame, but for an audience who’ve come to a comedy festival rather than a hen night, it’s just plain awkward and embarrassing.

But that’s as nothing compared to most the comedy on offer – a tedious tide of unimaginatively below-the-belt pseudo-smut, combined with tedious reworkings of pop songs with some of the words changed so they become rude. How hilarious is that?! It’s a rhetorical question…

All this is linked together with stilted, uncomfortable moments when all three share the stage for banter that has all the easy fluidity of sandpaper – and is just as coarse.

Opening is half-Singaporean, half-Aussie Janelle Koening, pictured, the only one of the three not to have landed the Puppetry gig. She sings song parodies that feature every euphemism for the front bottom you can think of and tells stories that could described as pure filth – if that phrase didn’t imply a certain uncompromising attitude that she simply doesn’t possess. Instead, it’s soulless, unconvincing, off-the-peg pap, impersonal and unoriginal.

Christine Basil isn’t that exceptional in her choice of material either – George Bush and pets get a mention, for instance. But she’s by far the best of the three, charming and chatty – and, most importantly, not feeling compelled to always pander to the lowest common denominator. There are a few smart lines and the set is nicely delivered, and while there’s nothing to get especially excited about, it’s a warmly enjoyable 15 minutes.

Bev Killick returns us to the tiresome smut with gruesome predictability. After, charmingly, telling us all about her ‘hairy minge’, we get ‘treated’ to such sloppily reworked hits as Killing Me Softly With His Schlong (geddit!!!?!!) and tired routines about what it would be like if Tina Turner were to advertise certain products. There are hints she could be better than this – particularly in the more personal observations about her grim hometown – but in the main she chooses to stick to the depressingly familiar.

You can see why the Puppeteers chose her as a warm-up act. After her set, a man playing with his own penis looks positively classy.

Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Melbourne, April 2005

Review date: 1 Jan 2007
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett