Review by Jay Richardson

A vivacious sketch act with an easy chemistry, Shirley & Shirley elevate some unappealing scenarios with physically committed performances and a preference for smutty material that cocks a snook at their afternoon slot.

The pair's characters tend towards the boastfully expressive, deluded pseuds and grotesques at the extremes of the class spectrum, exemplified by their reimagining of the Middleton sisters as proud, patois-spouting ghetto gals. If that sounds absolutely awful, well, it isn't. Joanna Carolan and Pascale Wilson actually tease out the sibling friction rather well, while successfully sending up the notion that the Duchess of Cambridge comes from humble origins.

Granted, it's an excuse for middle-class white women to play at bumping, grinding and exaggerated 'street' accents to a degree that might be cringeworthy. But they've actually got the moves and accents down pat, Carolan's booty-shaking Pippa perpetually reminding Wilson's Kate where she came from, all the while piquing our future Queen by stealing her celebrity focus. Elsewhere, a posh bride-to-be and her salt-of-earth fiancée endearingly tease each other's expectations of what marriage will bring. But Sloaney girls recalling their gap year in Uganda is simply one-gag tedious.

Turkish, mixed-race cousins competing to dance in Channel 5's latest tawdry talent competition reinforces the Shirleys intention to show off all their ethnic voices. But there are some lovely, unwitting lines at the wannabes' expense. Less entertaining are bitchy gay Italian brothers, queenish double-stereotypes insulting each other with increasingly hysterical evocations of cuisine from their homeland. Fortunately, it's one of the rare skits that doesn't return.

Most do though, and alongside a series of commercials for a fragrance betraying the true feelings of the wearer, to the soundtrack of Radiohead's Creep, there's the ongoing courtship of a sophisticated French teacher by her gauche Australian counterpart in the geography department. With the tall Wilson aloof and sexually liberated, the puppyish, eager-to-please Carolan infatuated, they fully inhabit their roles and capably ratchet up the latter's humiliation to its inevitable heartache.

Unabashed about getting physical, if there's not a sapphic undercurrent to their performance, there's certainly an erotic charge. Carolan's amusingly over-the-top recreation of Anne Hathaway in the Les Miserables film becomes an audition for a prospective date. Extremely lucky to pluck a game young guy from the crowd on the day I saw it, they indulge in a bit of lapdancing and full-contact flirtation. Perhaps Wilson was correct at the top of the hour to suggest this show ought to be on nearer to midnight.

Review date: 14 Aug 2013
Reviewed by: Jay Richardson