Megan Mullally & Her Band Nancy & Beth

‘It started as a bit of a joke,’ said Megan Mullally in a recent interview, ‘but it’s not as much of a joke now.’  Which doesn’t in the least mean her ‘punk vaudeville’ show is not funny or not extremely entertaining.  What Ms Mullally means is that this now highly polished show began in 2011 with Ms Mullally and Stephanie Hunt fooling around – with a ukulele apparently – finding they loved the same songs and that their voices blended, and slowly developing Nancy and Beth.  Don’t ask me to explain the title.  Maybe ‘Nancy’ and ‘Beth’ are just nice generic names for ‘nice’ generic girls – which this two are not.  At all.  Nice.

Dressed identically in pink track suits, big glasses and identical hair styles – bunches on top – Ms Mullally and Ms Hunt lope onto the stage like twins (despite a thirty year age difference) an impression somehow of two clowns, enhanced by the intricate, kooky choreography (by Ms Mullally) in which each mirrors the other’s movements, accompanying their songs and at times providing ironic – or suggestive – comment on them.  Both are limber as can be to pull this off and it is irresistibly funny. 

Their eclectic repertoire of songs ranges from that old happy Doris Day hit, ‘Everybody Loves a Lover’ through to Wynona Carr’s ‘Please, Mr Jailer’, to Gucci Mane’s pretty dirty, ‘I Don’t Love Her’ and all the way to some ‘spirituals’ sung absolutely straight, beautifully and with no send-up at all.  On the other hand, there’s a song about an old chair in which the double entendre is unmistakeable as is the import of the choreography.  At the end of this number, Ms Mullally quips that she doesn’t like erotic choreography and so ‘I just skipped right through to gross’.

They’re backed up by a multi-skilled and multi-talented five-piece band, all in red overalls: Datri Bean on keyboard, Joe Beradi on drums, Petra Haden on strings, Roy Williams on guitar and Andrew Pressman on bass.  They are absolutely participants, providing back-up vocals, back chat and anecdotes – one, about Julia Roberts from bassist Andrew Pressman, is positively scandalous – and Ms Mullally adds casually that Roberts is a bitch.  It’s one of the very few moments when ‘Karen Walker’, her award-winning character in the TV sit-com Will and Grace’, joins the mix.  Meanwhile, Ms Haden occasionally drops her violin and shows that she is a great mimic and a singer too – with a voice about as fine as Mss Mullally and Hunt.

There’s really no apparent structure or logic to the proceedings.  Rather there’s a more or less deliberately (calculated) random feel to song order and the ad libs in between are throwaways – albeit no doubt tried and tested over the five years since the show first went before an audience.  Too bad that this show is only two nights in Melbourne.  It has you amazed, laughing, smiling – and moved too – throughout.  What a pleasure to see such a thoroughly professional show masquerading as just two girls having some fun.

Michael Brindley

Photographers: Alex Gorosh (top) and Giles Clement (lower).