Review by Hilary Wardle

There’s a quick and easy way to find out if you’ll enjoy KelFi and FiKel. Are you ready? Bums, cock, spunk, willies, sex, lol.

Are you laughing? Then you should probably get a ticket. If you aren’t, it probably isn’t for you.

Purposefully silly cabaret shows can be entertaining. Watching two women sing as many swearwords as they can in two minutes, impersonate an autistic child and dress as sperm-collecting nuns could - if well done - be funny. But there’s something about Fiona Della Ca and Kellie Higgins’s attempts to cajole ‘shocked’ laughs out of their tightly kettled audience that feels forced and, at times, a bit painful.

There’s a ‘you don’t have to be mad to work here, but it helps!!!!!!’ feverishness to the musical duo that feels a bit off-putting, like being cornered at the office party by two sozzled administrators who have printouts of cat memes stuck above their desks and who always draw penises on the kitchen cleaning rota because they’re just that ‘crrrrazy’.

Kel and Fi’s attempts to be outrageous and self-consciously wacky end up coming across as dated, particularly the sketch about a pair of young girls acting out a make-believe story at a school performance. At first, their mannerisms and the lively imagination are a spot-on and well observed pastiche of the way six- to eight-year-olds think and act, but it doesn’t take long before what could have been a fun and entertaining sketch descends into a series of over-the-top sexual references. It doesn’t feel shocking, just a bit dull. Children singing about sex! Oh my, etc.

The potential in the sketch about an exaggerated home-schooling mother and her autistic child is similarly frittered away. Although Fi’s characterisation is spot on (think Rain Man in a bobble hat), there’s just not enough meat on the sketch’s bones to make it genuinely funny. They remembered to add a catchphrase but forgot the punchline, and without a solid payoff, Fi’s performance isn’t enough to generate solid laughs.

The finale pretty much sums up the whole show. The duo dance about on stage in their spangly Ugg boots singing ‘if you’ve ever done ‘x’, shout ‘y’, with ‘x’ representing something outrageous, truth-or-dare style, like public masturbation or fancying George Michael.

Save yourself £10.50 and just watch every single Boots Here Come The Girls advert back to back on YouTube for an hour instead, it’ll be far cheaper and much more enjoyable.

Review date: 6 Aug 2013
Reviewed by: Hilary Wardle