By the time this review reaches your grubby wee hands, the Fringe Festival – a rare opportunity to see up-and-coming talent treading the boards, producing weird, off-beat, and fabulously fun theatre – will already be over. Which is a shame, because if you didn’t see Space Bitches you missed a treat.

Part post-third wave Girl-Power extravaganza, part Marvel Comics-style superhero quest, part Lady Gaga, part Mighty Boosh, Space Bitches is a wholly surreal comic caper from the pen of Hamish Parkinson and Erin Harrington. The heroes are sparkle-clad space-divas Honey Laser (Lucy Mulholland), Glitter Storm (Delia McCormack), and Misty Shimmer (Alice May Connelly), who bake cupcakes and defeat the evil forces of patriarchy and inter-galactic capitalism from their Glitter Cave. “Kicking ass” is the modus operandi of these self-identified ‘bitches’, but always with a social conscience: this is women’s empowerment for the Occupy generation. [More] 

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Will this be a show about dogs in space, I wonder, or astronauts getting cranky about their cramped working conditions, or bad girl space invaders …?  

It turns out to be a genre romp about a quartet of female superheroes in space: Venus Sparkles (Kathleen Burns), Honey Laser (Lucy Mulholland), Glitter Storm (Delia Cormack) and Misty Shimmer (Alice May Connolly).

Their last ‘job’ together – achieved at the start of the show – is to vanquish their arch nemesis John Chills Jr (Hamish Parkinson) who has paced the stage abusing someone on the other end of a phone call as we take our seats. We discover later he was an inter-galactic arms dealer, so of course had to be killed and apparently his evilness absolves our heroines of any need to have moral fortitude themselves.

Together these Bitches are strong, if that’s the word: “I’ll kick your ass right outa space / ‘cos I was born a bitch!” their theme song declares. No other back-stories motivate their dedication to being avengers; they just love the lifestyle.

Between gigs they await orders from “the all-knowing mystical void” – nicely set up with a signature riff by Space Ghosts musicians Tobias Brockie & Richard Marks – except this promising device never pays off for all the build up it gets.

When Venus Sparkles decides her powers are fading and she needs to retire, the others are reduced to mundane work – e.g. serving at a cup cake kiosk – which doesn’t mean trouble makers don’t still get arbitrarily killed. A Space Polar Bear (Andrew Todd) also gets despatched – by Honey Lasers’ flimsy gold sword call Gaga, no less – without due process. Hell, they wouldn’t be Bitches if they went by the book (assuming there is one wherever they are).

The rise of the Wo-Man (sp?) Shopping Experience provokes the remaining three Bitches to regroup – and of course evil pops up everywhere they turn, not least in the shape of one they once saw as one of them …

I can’t help feeing playwright Hamish Parkinson’s background in improv (largely with The Court Jesters) has informed the nature of this work in that the plot seems to exist mainly to provide a platform for performance as an end in itself. While the purpose of improv is to meet the challenges offered the audience, who are therefore entertained by witnessing the attempts, a pre-written and rehearsed show needs a greater purpose to satisfy its audience.

Sure there is satire about the nature of super markets and megastores but how can we take that seriously when there is no social commentary about vigilante avengers with pathological tendencies? We can’t be expected to be mindful about one issue and mindless about another.

The cast embody their characters with flair and good timing; they sing and dance pretty well, too. Friends and relations may enjoy watching them strut their stuff for its own sake, but I am with those who want more.

If this is the means, what is the end? 

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer