By FRANCIS TILL
Cracks in the Garden, from No Name comedy duo Jo Randerson and Gentiane Lupi, is strictly mind candy, the sort of show Woody Allen might have written for vaudeville if he'd been less riddled with angst.
But Allen's style of seamless self-referencing is much in evidence, as well as
full-on fretting about the state of the world, deadpan pauses, faux story lines, physical incompetence, all of it. But there's more.
Just when the audience thinks they've got the flow, it goes zooming off in another direction, sometimes creaming the style of other acts but more often breaking new ground.
There are props aplenty, even one that figures in its own shaggy dog story, and costumes that range from wigs to animal heads, with a few dozen layers of petticoat thrown in for good measure.
There are hesitant explorations of lesbian sex, immediately followed by strident and extremely funny denials that anything of that sort is going on at all. The denials are then followed, of course, by further attempts at, well, the sort of stuff that leads to denial.
There's some truly inventive physical comedy, as well, of a cleverly post-modern sort, but mostly there is great wit on highly energetic display.
Holding things together is an uber (or unter) story line, in which the two are professional stand-up comics putting on a cabaret-like show they've rehearsed to perfection, but without any apparent success, while coping with external and relationship situations that frequently overwhelm them in this, their first performance.
One more thing, and as a fan of Lenny Bruce I never thought I'd say it, but Randerson and Lupi make refreshingly minimal use of profanity. You wouldn't take your children to this, it can at times be something the censor might be interested in looking closely at, but they get where they're going without endlessly rehearsing the dreary old potty mouth lexicon.
Go see these two, have a glass of wine, relax.
