Before the show begins, a photo of a beaming muscular black man can be seen onstage, surrounded by candles. We then hear a series of messages from Leads and Stern to the answer-phone of ‘Davondre’, asking him where he is. Leads and Stern then laddishly rave onstage, acting out a montage of vulgar drinking behavior. They tell us that very sadly, Davondre, who was their third comic, had tragically died at the beginning of the Fringe and that they would have to carry on without him.
The comedy that lay in the idea of a pious-sounding American bodyguard type being the third part of a female sketch show was probably the strongest element in it. They then went on to their sketches which, to be frank, were only a bit funny, quite silly and had predictable punch-lines. A few of the scenes were repeated, but it was refreshing when afterwards they announced: ‘and that was a reenactment of an earlier joke, it’s actually a very good time saver.’ It was also refreshing to see they avoided classic jokes about the fact that they were women, which is all too often the temptation nowadays.
There is another disappointing flaw in their work. Unfortunately Stern is much funnier than Leads. Her comic timing was better and her characters were much more distinct from each other than Leads’ were. This might be, however, due to the somewhat unbalanced divvying up of characters. It seemed that Leads would almost always be the straight man and keep this character pretty much the same polite, nervous, awkward woman in every sketch. Perhaps if the casting were a little more balanced, it could be agreed that they were equally talented, but at the moment, it cannot. It wasn’t entirely to my taste but the rest of the audience (who I am delighted to say were predominately male) were loving it. I just wish Davondre hadn’t died.
