Mmm Hmmm

This tight-lipped title isn’t telling you much about the show wrapped up inside it, except to hint that it’s all about the sound. But that really is the overriding hook for Bristol-based Verity Standen’s barmy and entertaining piece.    

The three women who make up the choral troupe—Standen, Ellie Showering and Dominie Hooper—love to play with sound, whether it's everyday words (slogans and calorie counts come in for a lampooning) or kitsch styles of song.

Clothed in the most remarkably versatile tri-coloured jersey dresses—please someone tell me where I can get one—used to create cassocks, daywear and comfortable-looking blobs, they play irreverent games with their fine-tuned, impeccable a capella skills. Three-way harmonies dish out train announcements in Gregorian chants, words are shared a-syllable-each to create a pipe-organ effect, and love songs are doused with biscuit-crumb spittle.

There’s a sweetness to their mischief which follows the vein of cosy surrealist Edward Monkton, though the sharp subversion of feminine ideals—those dresses, calories, and biscuit crumbs—has echoes of Smack the Pony.

But original as it is, Mmm Hmmm sometimes seems to fall into the gap of being not quite blisteringly funny enough to keep us on our toes, and not quite developed musically enough to carry the 45-or-so minutes of show. After a few numbers you feel as if you have the measure of their style, and it blows you on its drifting, whimsical path without ever reaching for higher goals.