Review by Steve Bennett

Sisters Lauretta and Sharon Gavin – aka Gavin & Gavin – have not appeared as a sketch duo on the Fringe for half a dozen years. But the interim has hardly been a bed of roses.

Lauretta was dumped by her husband when she was six months pregnant, while her sister Sharon also became a single mum after a relationship failed… and to add to the fun contracted the rare autoimmune disease dermatomyositis – a condition so bad that doctors told her not to Google it – which left her needing a wheelchair.

Such brutal tough-luck stories are the staple of stand-up, but it’s rare to find a sketch act mining real life – at least not quite so explicitly as the siblings do here. But the result, in which details of the tale are interspersed with different character pieces, falls uneasily between two stools.

Their portrayal of the people they encounter (or in one case become) are well-done; but a little too generic. The Irish women forever ‘fecking’ as they discuss their mundane lives can be summed up with the punchline: ‘I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter? I fecking can!’ of which Mrs Brown might be proud.

The bag of bad attitude they encounter in the ante-natal clinic also relies on the repeating of a sweary phrase about how her fanny might turn out during the birth. The aggressive attitude packs a punch but its dependent on the familiar joke of middle-class girls talking ‘street’. The same idea recurs when they put on a swagger to take advantage of the priority boarding the get at the airport as a ‘fit disabled person and a fit disabled person’s carer’. The rhythms are nice on both of these scenarios, but it’s the same ancient accent joke of speaking like: ‘Shit lady you is old…’

Other creations include Lauretta’s ‘lady who lunches’ pal not being able to get her head around the fact she’s given up booze, or a bitchy would-be improv-actress working as assistant of Brazilian psychic healer John of God. Though I’d rather have heard more about the whole journey to seek such a peculiar cure than another impression of a West Coast wannabe.

Which I think is endemic of the show; they’ve got an engrossing and extreme story – from which they’ve managed to emerge with apparent good humour – but they have stuck too closely to familiar caricatures to illustrate it.

Review date: 21 Aug 2015
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Assembly Hall