Airnadette

French 'air band' Airnadette very much put all their oeufs in one basket with this admirably brave but distinctly Marmitey lip-sync musical. If you buy into the concept, this is likely to be an entertaining hour and indeed a sizeable minority of the audience are bopping about in their seats from the begining and dancing in the aisle by the end. But if you don't, then there is little else to redeem it.

The preserve of bedroom amateurs with a hairbrush and are-they-or-aren't-they popstars, the problem with Airnadette's lip-syncing is that they are halfway between these two extremes: not ramshackle enough to be endearing nor sufficiently polished to be impressive. There are numerous occasions where the performers are just ahead or just behind the audio and some of the cast use the same goldfish gob for the majority of their lines, regardless of whom they are supposed to be chanelling.

It needn't have been like this, either. Airnadette make it difficult for themselves with what must be hundreds of changes from one line of movie dialogue to the next, and 20-second snippets of 30-odd songs. This also makes for an unsatisfying show: very few of the lines are recognisable—rendering a large part of the performance pointless—and while most of the set-piece songs are potentially very entertaining, you've only just settled into one before they're off onto another. The rough around the edges technique aside, what could have been a cohesive, thoroughly enjoyable show ends up feeling like snippets of 50 mediocre ones rammed together.