MICF 2015: Reviews #10 – by Lucy Watson

I saw Wander Women on opening night, and for a sketch show this usually means trying out material in front of an audience for the first time. With that in mind, the ladies of Wander Women (Lauren Bok, Chelsea Hughes & Megan Mckay) were confident and full of energy, and the audience responded warmly and with plenty of laughs. With a theme as rich with possibilities as travel, they had a wealth of travel-related material to draw from, and they skipped between characters, and topics with ease. Some of the sketches could be more developed (as I’m sure they will grow to be throughout the season), but they really hit their stride by the halfway mark, with some killer laughs and really entertaining sketches. They paused in their cavalcade of voices and characters for some fun interludes featuring their own travel photos and stories. It would be nice to allow these sections more prominence, as they gave the show a more personal feel and we were able to get to know the cast better. All three are funny, and have good chemistry. They have also put together a whole range of hilarious sight, audio and video gags, making the whole show an overall sensory experience – much like travel itself. It is irreverent, fun and sketch comedy in a truly classic sense. With a bit more time performing together, and time to allow their material to mature, the Wander Women team will really reach their comedic mountain peak.

The This is Siberian Husky team (Simon Godfrey and Dan Allemann) come from a far off planet where anything and everything is possible. Their surrealist comedy is embodied with merely their voices and physicalisation. Both are excellent, and the guys manage to take the audience to some incredibly diverse places with only a few audio or physical queues. Some of the joy of watching one of their sketches is not knowing where they are or what is happening until the end of the sketch. Their comedic style is not your average skit-punchline format. Their laughs often come from the ridiculousness of the situation, and their hilarious character work, rather than the killer sketch punchline – which most sketch performers seek like an elusive unicorn. Instead the Siberian Husky guys leap from sketch to sketch, further and further into the absurd, until, like a surrealist elastic band, they begin to retract back through the worlds they have already set up. Instead of one unicorn, there are many, and they could pop up at anytime – in the case of this show, literally. Definitely entertaining, especially if you like your comedy with a good helping of cheese-dreaminess, you can only imagine what these guys could do with a TV show, and some visual effects.

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