A Clucking Good Hen Night

Published Monday 17 September 2007 at 10:35 by Thom Dibdin

Three characters, two hen nights and one hunky stripper make for a lot of clucking in this latest collaboration from writer Rona Munro and performer Fiona Knowles.

This is the territory in which MsFits excels - a well-known situation seen from a worldly-wise female perspective and told in a multi-character, one-woman performance with equal scope for saucy laughs and poignant observation.

Except that the scenario here is somehow too perfect. The idea of a pair of hen nights caught up in a deluge and swept out to sea fits so well that both script and performance seem nervous.

There are too many clunky little corners to Munro’s script when she really should be bringing her overarching story together in smooth detail. The full-on cackle potential of the situation is toned down as she overcompensates with the serious sides to the characters in order to offset the bawdy comedy of it all.

While Knowles builds three well-rounded characters, they don’t really grab you in the way they might, while her projection starts out too quietly and doesn’t begin to build.

As an introductory character, her third time-around bride feels too apologetic, where a more sassy attack could have set up more light to the shade. A fish-out-water office manager is similarly surprisingly douce in creation and it is not until the third character, a great granny, is introduced that the show begins to feel right.

For all that Knowles spot-on creation and Munro’s instinctive observation work well, they need to find more connectivity between the characters.