Tomboi are a tonic. A perfect tonic. Because laughter really, really is the best medicine and this pair provides sugary spoonfuls of hilarity.

Somewhat akin to Wellington’s very own French and Saunders, Cathie Sheat and Andy Harness perform a series of short skits interspersed with pre-recorded video segments which had the opening night audience laughing to the level of uncontrollable snorts. [More]
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A feature event for the 2^nd Asia Pacific Out Games, Laugh Your Bits Off is Tomboi’s inaugural production, although Cathy Sheat and Andy Harness are two of the artists previously known as The Drag Kings. Their live skits are intercut with video inserts, allowing them the requisite time to change costumes and revise their make-up backstage.

Andy’s failure to join Cathy on stage for the twice-repeated upbeat showbiz entrance (sound and lighting by Deb McGuire) allows for ‘dressing room cam’ to find her indulging herself aloft. The packed house of opening night supporters almost took the roof off when she delayed her entrance even further by sloshing more bubbles into her flute.

The manifestation that appears on stage, however, is the mono-browed Nini, with latent moustache, who claims to be the love child of Nana Mouskouri and some incomprehensibly chewed-up name (Freddie Mercury perhaps?). Her heavily accented shtick covers hair and “depressions” as she tells of how she met the Tomboi two and anticipates the “menagerie” in which they’ve suggested she joins them. Lacking in self-belief or any endearing qualities, it’s little more than a ‘laugh at the ugly stupid lady’ gag, which the premiere audience seemed to love.

Cathy brings her alcohol-fixated fat male slob to the couch, which is his sole comfort zone, to sing a song that questions what constitutes laziness. He, of course, deserves all the opprobrium we care to heap on him. But he’s not very funny. Consider for a moment what makes Barry Humphries’ Les Patterson funny. He loves himself, challenges us to see ourselves reflected in him and is a vehicle for some penetrating satire. Could this joker learn something from that?

A screen ad for ‘Sluts Correspondence Inter Course’ (hoots of hilarity) precedes the first of a series of relatively amusing video breaks involving the escapades of two Garden Gnomes (Cathy and Anna) who are trying to find work, or a place to stand / sit / lie at least. Their running tag gag of blowing raspberries is unaccountably funny.

Live in stage, two straggly-haired women have a loving conversation comprised entirely of title and quotes from songs. That’s clever and would be better if there was some sort of dramatic context to it, beyond a mere exchange of dialogue.

Another series of video clips involves some days in the lives of ‘Pussy Lovers’ Sandra and Mandy, the most amusing of which (to me) involves their attempts to get their beloved ‘Xena Fluffy-bum Princess’ signed up with a casting agency “that only charges $1,000 a year to have her on their books.” In this case their naivety and self-belief is endearing.

Amy Winehouse deserves to be sent up rotten, of course, and is by Andy, with her version of ‘There Are Worse Things I Could Do’ (from Grease?). A witty collage of shock-horror tabloid headlines catching ‘unlikely friends’ Amy and ‘SuBo’ out on the town provides the segue for Cathy’s appearance – in a totally wrong grey wig – to do a “dirty dream” version of the song that shot Susan Boyle to fame and stardom. As with much of the show, the writing is clever but the presentation is humdrum.

Two superheroes, hugely bulked up and branded S and T, meet at a bus stop and chat matter-of-factly about their tights and colours before discovering they were both born in the wake of a fertiliser explosion on a remote farm … This time the poker-faced delivery of a whimsical premise in bizarre costumes conspire to make for a memorable sketch.  

A video sequence about the specialised ‘Spit & Spank Cleaning Service’ (“no cracks or crannies left untouched”) ticks the obligatory S&M-cum-B&D box (“voyeur charges apply”).

Nuns being naughty is always good for a laugh and so it proves when Sister Mary Quite Contrary (Andy), new to this convent, asks Sister Aloysius A Little Bit Vicious (Cathy) about the ecstatic ways others seems to being praying at night time. It’s a witty script where phrases common to Christianity take on whole new meanings, and it all comes together in a climactic re-working of the feminist anthem ‘Sisters Are Doing It To (rather than For) Themselves’.

An ad for ‘Ballerina Balls’ offers an answer to skyrocketing food prices. Then we get the final video: their ‘am-dram’ send up of Heathcliffe and Cathy to the Kate Bush song, ‘Wuthering Heights’.

For their finale, Andy and Cathy feature their beloved Bogan Bro personae and – “yeh, nah, eh” – get us all to sing along, which the opening night audience is only too happy to do.

It’s a patchy show: a strung-together list of gags and skits with little thematic linking beyond the ‘lesbian comedy’ premise, structured to solve the logistical problems of performance more than anything else. Despite some good moments, it therefore adds up to less than the sum of its parts, which is a shame given the amount of hard work that has gone into getting it ready.  

As with many Queer Culture shows, some rigorous attention to scripting, dramatic structuring and performance directing – for both the live and taped components – could realise the full potential of these talents. But with a captive audience for whom supporting such shows is an act of political commitment, it’s probably hard to find the incentive to make it as good as it could be.
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