Umbrella Birds: Sketches In A Shop Changing Room

All-female comedy foursome The Umbrella Birds are keen to confront and riff on women's various insecurities about their appearance and self-image. In past years, they've presented Fringe audiences with sketches set in some unusual and claustrophobic spaces in a bid to bring these neuroses out, such as a gym and a public toilet.

This year’s offering sees writer and actress Emily Watson Howes and her co-stars playing a multitude of mostly hysterical women in a series of snappy sketches set in a clothes shop. Initially, the prospect of being let into this intimate space looks intriguing. The four cubicles on stage which serve as changing rooms for the characters—as well as for the actors between sketches—promise an organic and honest show. Disappointingly, the material fails to deliver this.

While reviewers have called Watson Howes’s sketches humane portrayals of ordinary women, excusing the fact that they “don’t worry about being all-out hilarious,” this lack of comedic ambition produces tired, clichéd parodies. From an overbearing mother eager to share sex stories with her cringing teenage daughter to a deluded spinster masquerading a doll as her baby, the characters play on stereotypes of sad, stupid, and pathetic women. Perhaps if The Umbrella Birds were out to get more laughs, the fact that these gags have been done before could be overlooked. But the lack of verve with which the performances are delivered means the show falls short of cutting-edge Fringe standards.