LipService make a welcome return with another of their literary spoofs - last year's deconstruction of the Bronte Sisters was very funny. This time, Louise May Alcott's 'Little Women' is their unwitting target.
Although this is a well-known book, you would be hard pressed to find anyone who has read it since childhood, particularly a male, so the humorous references to the story strained the audience's remembrance of the book's contents.
The LipService duo (Maggie Fox and Sue Ryding) are joined by Matthew Vaughan and between them play all the characters of the story. Actually, that's not strictly true as many characters are portrayed by dolls, cardboard cut-outs, off-stage voices and dismembered limbs. A typical scene would involve one of the sisters conversing with the silent cardboard character of the 'love interest'. She then calls to her sister, walks off stage and reappears a moment later after a lightning fast costume change.
The difficulty of portraying so many characters provides most of the humour of the production - but unfortunately, once you've got that it isn't enough to keep you laughing for 2 hours. There are other sources of humour - taking off the sisters' uncompromising morality, self-sacrifice and patronising attitude to the poor not to mention the sickening cuteness of the story.
Maggie and Sue are superb comic actors but the painful repetition of the one joke made this a rather disappointing production that had the audience looking at their watches. Worth seeing, but would have benefited from a sharper script.
Other articles by Adrian
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