Review by Steve Bennett

There’s something not quite right about Lou McCrae and Nic Minster. Their sketches march to a slightly different beat than most, which gives them both a distinctive edge and a hurdle to overcome.

In this, only their second festival show, they have not achieved the consistency to fully exploit their peculiar tone and relationship, but raise plenty of interest about their potential. There are a good crop of highlights, and the hour gradually builds up its own momentum, drawing the audience in.

Their creations are often disconcertingly out of step with the world, too... Well, except their child beauty pageant contestant, who can’t possibly be weirder than the real Honey Boo Boo. Highlights include the inappropriate doctor and Funny Boner, the crude but unfunny Australian musical comedy act that’s a very thinly-disguised parody.

Shorter sketches are strongest, and they have a talent for building up a mood, then undermining it, demonstrated with a ‘little kid lost’ scenario and a sketch based only on financial buzzwords that unravels nicely. Their playful interactions with each other are endearing, especially when they come off-script to let their real personalities shine through.

Yet in other places they need to be tighter, and carve away at pedestrian pop culture set-ups about reality TV or exercise infomercials. In the latter case, the joke is only an inelegant girl sprawling over a yoga ball, and not worth the journey. Generally it’s video elements such as this that are the weak links... but they’ve got to cover costume changes somehow.

Ideas and characters recur, not always for especially good reason, and the two occasions when they pluck out an audience ‘volunteer’, the gag is to watch their awkwardness, which seems a cheap – and familiar – trick.

Yet they are very likeable, and have a quirkiness and originality that sets them apart. It may take a couple more festivals to perfect, but Girls Uninterrupted feel as if they are on a path to creating something different.

Review date: 17 Apr 2013
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Melbourne International Comedy Festival