French & Saunders: Still Alive
Liverpool Empire; Wednesday, April 16
Did you see the post-credits scene of this week's Shameless? If so, good - because that makes this review a lot easier to write.
I love, love, love French and Saunders. Right from when I was not quite a teenager and their Thursday night BBC2 show parodied all the things a young person finds it important to dislike; Blue Peter, Sonia and Bros.
This was the first time I had seen Dawn and Jen live on stage (it's quite strange, being in the same room - albeit a huge one - as someone from the telly) and it was a show I'd looked forward to for a long time.
This is the pair's final fling as a duo, if the tour publicity is to be believed. Therefore, a lot of the humour was based around the rivalry between the twosome over their solo efforts, the mass mainstream affection for The Vicar of Dibley versus cult favourite Absolutely Fabulous.
Mixed in to this were sketches from the latest BBC series and others dating back to the late '80s. We got two girls at a bus stop discussing contraception (it's all about using loads of towels to mop up fish and a great big egg), the scene which inspired Ab Fab, with Dawn in the Saffy role, as well as a brilliant parody of A Chorus Line (much appreciated here, as it's a film/show I take great relish in disliking).
To give the girls time to change outfits between scenes, much use was made of pre-recorded material projected on a screen based upstage. This enabled further re-enactments of favourite skits, including Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, Joan and Jackie Collins as those 'Lucky Bitches' and the old ladies on mobility scooters, this time harrassing a pair from Strictly Come Dancing.
Although a lot of their more recent material appears over-indulgent and over-long on screen, it works better in a live environment. Performed in front of 2,000 people who love the pair to bits, even the scenes with a slightly darker side - the two girls left in a boarding school over the Christmas holidays - hold your attention more than when you're wedged in an armchair with a cup of tea and a Digestive.
Another bit of playground humour fun was Dawn walking among the crowd with her Choc-o-meter to glean as many treats as possible from the crowd (a fair few French-endorsed Terry's Chocolate Orange came her way - and I don't recall seeing those on sale in the foyer, perhaps the F&S web forums have been dishing out tips...)
And if you've ever wondered what a massive inflatable female vicar looks like... well, I won't spoil that bit in case you're booked elsewhere for later in the tour.
Now, Shameless. Once the pair have sung their version of ABBA's Thank You For the Music, followed by a touching montage of their greatest sketches, the encore is an appearance by the lecherous blokes with overactive libidos who appeared in earlier runs of their sketch series.
I can't possibly write here what they did which made 75 per cent of the audience curl up in a ball with childish giggles, but if you sure what Lilian produced while standing next to Frank in the closing seconds of Tuesday night's episode -you'll know what I mean.
Had to join in the standing ovation, I may never get the chance to see them together again.
Bop-a-doo-ee-doo.
10/10
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