Croft & Pearce: Give and Take
Enjoyable hour of comedy in need of extra funny injection
One thing's for sure in this show, you can't fault Hannah Croft and Fiona Pearce's skills as actors. They bring to life all of their diverse characters with absolute precision and conviction. Effortlessly changing from middle-aged, middle-class ladies to a toothy fella with laddish workmates then a streetwise Brown Owl and her intimidated Brownie.
Sketches interweave as relations across the skits - mother and sons, work colleagues and diet gurus and clients - reveal themselves, yet there's no hesitation or confusion between scenes. You can clearly see who's coming next, the range of accents to help to mark out the different characters too.
The only quibble here is that they could with bigger jokes, the humour is relatively gentle and the overall result feels more like a comedy drama rather than an outright funnyfest. That said there are some delights here, the depressing middle-class ladies is a lovely running gag and the deconstruction of a B&B buffet nicely done.
There's also a sweet signing off moment in which the pair reveal where and when they first met. Overall it's an enjoyable hour and if they ramp up the funny this could go far, very far.
Gilded Balloon, 622 6552, until 24 Aug (not 11), 5.45pm, £10 (£8).