The Boom Jennies: Blowout

It might be the final slot of the day, and the majority of us may be rubbing our eyes and pining for a double espresso, but, in the Pleasance Baby Grand, The Boom Jennies are living up to their troupe’s name. The bouncy, all-female trio fills what they call a “glorified cupboard” with bombshell energy.

Within a (slightly pointless) framing device whereby the audience gets to choose the music that will fill the void between one sketch and the next, the three ladies dance, sing, shout, screech and bemoan their inability to get a date. And, although the performances are admirable, the sketches themselves often range from fairly unimaginative to, occasionally, toe-curlingly bad.

Even those vignettes that promise some exciting comic potential—an exchange between penpals that takes a sinister turn, for example—never build up to any sort of satisfactory punchline. Even when the end-of-scene revelation has the potential to be funny, the choice of line uttered generally removes any comedic impact by being too obvious or glib.

The poor writing here is a great shame: the sight of one of the Jennies drinking another’s toothpastey saliva, or that of slices of ham, chocolate mousse and mayonnaise being sprayed across the performers and stage, leave the audience guffawing. The Boom Jennies, as comic actors, really do have the potential to be explosive – but their material here is a bit of a damp squib.