Melbourne comedy festival review by Steve Bennett

After prancing around theatrically in their leotards, wearing Shakespearean ruffs and baldie caps, it comes as absolutely zero surprise when the Travelling Sisters reveal they come from a thespian background. ‘No respectable company would employ us,’ they sing in a jaunty opening number… which is of course how they came to be here.

It probably also explains the exaggerated physicality they bring to their sketches. Few scenes are performed without melodramatic posturing, ranging limbs flailing wildly in exaggerated parody  of daggy dancing or over-emphatic performance.

Mime skills come to the fore as they enact the theft of Edvard Munch’s The Scream from an Olso art gallery, while their assuredness on stage also means they are happy to do their costume changes in front of the curtains, exposing their giant, unflattering  underpants (and sometimes risking more) as they adopt their next caricature.

These cartoony creations include the irritating yoga bunny in the changing room, Linda Meatpurse, their alleged producer who speaks with a  strangely forced cadence, stripteasing lollipop ladies, and the monobrowed, gap-toothed child sharing a ‘very naughty’ story. Weirdest of the lot is a strange, undefined green spiky reptilian creature, whose mundanity amid the peculiar owes a debt tot he Mighty Boosh.

There is a huge sense of freewheeling, mischievous fun to all this. The trio of Lucy Fox, Laura Trenerry and Ell Sachs are clearly enjoying every minute, and merrily roll with the fleeting audience interactions and occasional mishaps, which they positively encourage in their knockabout show.

They certainly rely on sweeping the audience up in their exuberance more than showcasing finely-honed writing – an approach which largely works, even if the audience might sometimes be wanting a little more substance. The fact that swinging their stupidly saggy false tits provides the punchline on more than one occasion is a little, erm, revealing.

And it’s notable that their finest moments come in song, whether their own peculiar take on the well-worn caricatures of hickster Country and Western singers or even the daft jingles that cover scene changes, where precise writing is more crucial.

Another hit idea is reprised from their 2016 show, in which they adapt the old improv trick of one performer providing the arms for another to a much larger-scale, and sillier, version.   That earlier show heralded this trio as a very promising bunch of clowns. Toupé doesn’t take them much further forward, but you’ve got to enjoy their joie de vivre.

Review date: 30 Mar 2018
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Melbourne International Comedy Festival