Review: Late Night Pillow Fight 2 – The Great Bitches Bake Off

In a time where the issue of women being underrepresented in comedy has flared up in the national press again, it was interesting to have an “all-chick charity comedy show” on our doorstep. The cast (or ‘Pillow Fighters’) were the four women from The St Andrews Revue, Shayna Layton, Simone Matthews, Taryn O’Connor and Mimi von Schack, and the two from Blind Mirth, Madeleine Inskeep and Fay Morrice. As was to be expected from mashing the two comedy groups of St Andrews together, the evening was a mixture of live and recorded sketches and improvised comedy, all in the name of Ovarian Cancer Aid.

The evening was generally strong – the audience was laughing throughout, and making their appreciation for the comedy apparent. Opening with Back in the Day a sketch introducing Inskeep, Matthews and O’Connor, the new members of the Revue and Mirth was a neat and funny way of kicking off the events, although, disappointingly, this separation between the older and newer members of the groups seemed to remain throughout the evening. A sketch of a ‘Frankenstein Barbie’, Barbie 2014 was well performed as was the Makeup Tutorial for FS as given by Inskeep (with Matthews’ ‘help’). As is to be expected with sketch comedy, there were moments where the comedy floundered, Ladies Who (Don’t) Lunch, made up of ridiculous restaurant orders felt a little trite and unoriginal especially when seen in the context of the other far stronger sketches.

We rattled through a number of strong sketches until the penultimate sketch of the first half, a brilliant parody of a Creative Writing Class in which Layton shone as a feminist-obsessed pupil, her ridiculous tirades on the oppression of women in fiction culminating in the recitation of a brilliant piece of slam-poetry with fabulous rhymes, including vagina with China, to great effect. It was in this sketch that the writing was particularly strong, and subverted the notion that all women’s comedy is focused solely on ‘women’s issues’.

Moving onto the recorded section of the programme, the video of Layton and von Schack sneaking into FS in pursuit of ‘fashion’ was the highlight for me. The ridiculous nature of the fashion show culture at St Andrews was exposed in the documentary-esque exposé to great effect, and I would love to know more about how they actually managed to get through the gates.

Following a raffle with an impressive list of local and student sponsors, the evening continued with a short improv section. The games of this section – famililar to anyone who has previously seen Blind Mirth – were well done, and the appearance of the special guest Lauren Dunlop, alumni of Blind Mirth, allowed the games to remain fast-paced and funny throughout. Dunlop’s skill was made clear when she guessed her occupation as a ‘deaf balloon popper’ late to work due to ‘Mormons knocking on the door’ in an incredibly quick time from a mime. The improv continued to impress with Fairy Tale allowing Layton to show off her considerable linguistic skill, creating a fusion of Jack and the Beanstalk and Inception with von Shack, Inskeep and O’Connor acting around Layton’s story.

The final sketch, the titular The Great Bitches Bake-Off, didn’t manage to finish off the evening with the strength of the other sketches. Although a dance off is always great fun, it was difficult to see the humour of the rest of the evening in it. Following the strength of what had gone before the final scene, it is hard to say how best the group should have ended the evening, but I would have liked to have left on a longer laugh – one that would have been representative of the evening as a whole.

Whoever was in charge of music for the event, please make a playlist we can all access – the music between the comedy was feel-good (I’m talking Californian Girls and Breakfast at Tiffany’s type stuff here) and meant the breaks between each sketch were not awkwardly silent, rather the audience was allowed a throwback to the excellent tunes of the past.

Anyone who still feels the need to ask whether women are funny needs look no further than the three streets of St Andrews to see that we have a myriad of funny women in KY16 and they’re putting their comedic skill to great use.

 Photos: Rachel Neely at Lightbox