It's under a year since Judith Lucy and Denise Scott both played the Canberra Theatre with separate standup shows. So why come back again this soon? Have they really come up with another essential hour worth us ponying up the cash to watch?
The answer is ... of course they have. The Spiral is a little bit of an oddity - it isn't quite a standup show, it isn't quite a book-tour-event, but it's definitely entertaining. The evening kicks off with Judith and Denise basically completely bypassing the stage and going straight into the audience for a few minutes of audience interaction, harassing, teasing and general amusement (plus the inevitable mocking of latecomers - if you've got tickets to a standup show, surely you'd know by now that the performer is probably going to mock you. Unless all latecomers are secretly masochists who just want to be told off for their temerity in coming late...) It's followed by conversation, jokes, one highly startling dance routine, a little bit of Q and A (and woe betide you if you decide to just make a statement rather than a question), and a little bit of book reading.
Both are highly skilled (well, they'd want to be, as Judith said to a twenty-three year old, "I've been doing this longer than you've been alive"), and both have a fairly different style and viewpoint - Judith the over-it-all fortyish one, Denise the fiftyish mother of multiple children - that makes this a highly polished evening that rolls along quite cleverly. There isn't anything particularly deep here, this isn't a show that's going to change your life, but it could change at least some elements of your wardrobe. And probably inspire you to buy (or at least hit the library up for) their books. A packed-out Canberra Theatre clearly loved it, and I loved it along with them.
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