Barbie is Dead at the Covert Theatre

Reviewed by FRANCIS TILL

Barbie is Dead is a class act: four excellent comic actors who happen to be women, putting on an improvised one-hour performance with all the zest of playground ruffians.

These women have a lot of fun doing what they do and they're a delight to watch.

The piece opens with a request to the audience for a theme - on the night I was there it turned out to be a vacation in Bali - and after a quick skit that opens up several lines of possibility, the group takes off in often wildly varying directions, each trying to keep up with the other.

After circling around doing aerobatic stunts for most of an hour, they return to the opening theme and tie together all the threads they have developed along the way.

This is high-risk stuff and it doesn't always work, but the actors are strong enough and well enough versed in their craft that failures are rare.

The whole thing tends to come together, actually, with the sort of seamlessness that makes much of it seem rehearsed. It's not, of course, and the rough edges that show here and there help to set up the successes to better effect.

It also helps that when the performers stumble into a blind alley they quickly realise it and are not too embarrassed to look at the audience, shrug, get down on the stage and swim.

The show is well suited to the Covert's intimate surround: the audience is close enough to catch every tic and the women make the essential bridge to the audience by stepping through the fourth wall whenever it seems appropriate.

Of the four, Cath Campbell is versatile and shows the most wit in her characterisations, but Gillian Berry, TM Bishop and Tineke Van der Walle each have singular strengths and play to them well.

Group improv is often compared to tennis. This seemed more like close-quarters, backstreet handball: a much faster and, ultimately, interesting game for the absence of racquets.