Review by Steve Bennett

One of Thomas Hardie’s best gags is their very name. Joy Thomas and Caroline Hardie joke that they combined their surnames to ‘trick’ unsuspecting punters into seeing females on stage.

Trick or no, there’s no great worth in seeking out these duo, who are still clearly finding their feet in comedy. They appear to be seeking to work on the weirder end of the scale, although they are not consistent or distinctive enough in style, and few ideas are fully-formed. Just being odd for its own sake is rarely enough.

They are pretty engaging performers, if not entirely confident in everything they do, which is so crucial in the surreal. Ideas such as the recurring gag of the girl who speaks in a shy monotone about how to make love last forever mistake putting on a strange voice for comedy, and that particular character is so quiet that it just seems embarrassing. Similarly they need to put more oomph into their singing if they are not to be drowned out by the backing track.

Although aiming for the bizarre, their jumping-off points tend to be very generic; easy-to-identify comic staples such as a fake news report, which doesn’t help distinguish their comic voice.

A couple of times they really hit the nail on the head, though – an early sketch about the horrors one of them has witnessed has a nice reveal, and the bonkers Janet Potato embraces the madness in a way they seem to have forgotten in other scenes. And the final sketch has a Knockabout visual ending, but it’s a muddled route to get there.

At only 45 minutes, including a short guest spot for a stand-up (today, Rosie Wilby) this very much seems like a rehearsal rather than the real show; a work in progress that still needs a lot of work to progress.

Review date: 17 Aug 2011
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett