Bearded Ladies

It’s nice to see the ladies getting some sketch action this year, and a four part group of ladies all working together does bring a smile to the face of any reviewer already overexposed to continued parades of male sketch groups covering the same ground. These ladies in particular also have some very impressive details on their CV, having written for Radio 4 and Smack The Pony. Great things are expected.

Unfortunately, they’re not delivered. Beginning and ending on the most crassly placed product placement, sponsored as they are by a certain razor company specialising in a certain kind of razor for a certain kind of lady hair, we should have read the warning signs and left while we had the chance.

There is a very odd swing between the tone of the sketches in this show – one moment it’s lovely familiar Radio 4 overtones and tea with the vicar’s wife, and the next it’s all genitals and oral relief. This random lurching from one tone to another is not shocking, it’s just confusing, and it just doesn’t work. It would be more beneficial to chose one style or direction and stick to it, because otherwise things become very messy. In the end, it’s a bit like listening to your mum telling dirty jokes – uncomfortable, slightly embarrassing, and not funny.

The show proceeds with increasingly tedious sketches, starting on a premise that could be dealt with in one or two lines, but is instead stretched out over a few minutes with no good effect. The sketch with the lady who refuses to speak in anything but olde englishe is a good case in point here – it simply goes nowhere.

The speed dating sketches peppered throughout the show also add to the death knoll. They parade a series of dysfunctional and desperate women trying to ensnare a man through any means necessary – sound familiar? It has already been done to death on Smack The Pony, and here just feels old. Although the performers are great, and extremely likeable, you can never quite shake the feeling that you’ve seen it all done somewhere before. And done better.

6.15pm, Smirnoff Underbelly, Belly Button