If Vinegar Knickers really were underwear you’d want to wear them proudly on the outside of your trousers for all to see. Returning to Edinburgh for the third time with the winning combination of Samantha Baines, Katie Burnetts and Harriet Fisher, Vinegar Knickers are confidently daring and terribly funny. With the ability to transform your face into a grin for the rest of the day, they really should be high up your Fringe to-do list.
This talented trio offer a fresh new voice to sketch comedy, dealing with modern issues such as Oxbridge interviews and the inanity of blogging in song form. The show opens with an especially high-energy firecracker: a witty dissection of social class complete with a hoover and rapping. There are topical moments too, but mainly the sketches are deliciously surreal and absurd. Each new scenario is delightfully unexpected, and it’s all linked together by seamless running commentary and the compulsion that they must maintain being edgy.
Vinegar Knickers don’t appear to be afraid of any topic. They power through Hitler, cat faeces and conjoined twins with charm, and they channel the contention of this material with their unfalteringly confident performances and intelligent script. Sketches which in the hands of others could become offensive, are delivered both tastefully and effectively. For example, a skit involving a white, Jewish girl portraying a Jamaican toilet assistant with no costume but an afro wig and stereotypical accent was belly laughingly funny due to the excellence of Burnetts’ physical comedy.
At times sketches are interrupted in a self-conscious review of what’s going on, which is well executed for the most part. However, after a while it becomes frustrating that more of the scenes don’t run to completion and instead resort to a, ‘Harriet, what are you doing?’ kind of ‘off-stage’ moment. Saying that, this really is one slightly pulled seam in a still very wonderful pair of knickers.
Go and see Vinegar Knickers for some truly different and daring laughs, they are a female tour-de-force and should not be missed.
