This was Norfolk and Norwich festival-goers’ chance to join the Frisky and Mannish School of Pop – but what did we learn?
We learnt that the duo are musically talented, witty and entertaining but had strangely decided to revive one of their older shows, leaving some of the material feeling distinctly out-of-date.
A chance meeting of Noel Coward and Lily Allen is a clever combination and the material works well, but an overlong Harry Potter pastiche revolving around the All Saints must have struggled to have resonance even five years ago. Elsewhere in the show, TLC’s No Scrubs was re-worked as a piece on Tudor foreign policy and Bonnie Tyler’s Total Eclipse of The Heart as a horror movie soundtrack.
Their musical parodies were warmly received by the slightly cold and wet audience in the Spiegeltent but I was left with a nagging doubt that we were a little cheated out of their fresher material.