Miss Itchy’s Larvae Lounge

If you’ve ever wondered why anarchists don’t write for television, this may be the answer.

Inaugural Barry Award and Piece of Wood Award winning comedy act Miss Itchy invade the Butterfly Club every Friday in July to bring us their own perverse take on the celebrity chat show in Miss Itchy’s Larvae Lounge.

‘Australia’s Premiere Identical Twin Teenage Bridesmaids’ Gerda (Linda Haggar) and Candy-Girl (Fahey Younger) invite us into a set that looks like Graham Norton was plunged into one of Salvador Dali’s nightmares – plush modern furnishings are adorned with visions of fish, potatoes and assorted raw meats, and jars of tape worms and witchetty grubs are littered throughout the space.

The aesthetic is slap-dash (with a heavy emphasis on ‘slap’) and the ‘twins’ emerge wrapped in shapeless taffeta and garnished in wigs that look like they were found at the side of a highway. The whole mess is deliciously vile.

What ensues is a shambolic array of bickering, not-so-polite small talk, and competitive attempts to make each other corpse, as the two set out to be as vulgar and abrasive as possible. With obligatory dance breaks, of course.

Gerda spends much of her time feeding guests stale Anzac biscuits from her underpants and ‘baby cakes’ (don’t ask), and Candy-Girl butchers the English language with a stammering idiocy that is actually quite endearing.

Special guests Tina Del Twist (Wes Snelling) and Geraldine Quinn provide momentary anchor points, discussing upcoming projects, gender-reassignment surgery, and performing a rather sweet duet of David Bowie’s ‘Rock’n’Roll Suicide’.

The show rambles a lot; a feature that is very difficult to avoid when it comes to a format that is largely improvisational, and that sadly allows the onstage energy and pace to lag a little too much, which ultimately undermines the genuine sense of danger and volatility that these nightmare twins could posses.

Also present is Miss Itchy’s in-house announcer, Nancy Spungen (Tim Harris) who interjects to deliver segments of news, commentary, advertisements and fan mail. Unfortunately, she is largely lost amidst the chaos of the rest of the show and her speeches, which would otherwise sting with an intellectual cynicism and wit, feel laboured in their writing and delivery.

Choreographed imperfection requires a tremendous level of secret precision and care to ensure that it hits its mark and avoids looking genuinely sloppy.While these characters are all delightfully obscene, and the concept of the ‘anti-chat show’ provides fun evening’s entertainment, with a little further finessing this how could be genuinely stomach turning.