That’s the Way the Mop Flaps

Hannah Malarski has a stage presence many would - and probably do - envy.  She has the necessary ‘oomph’, and she immediately connects with the audience.  Warm, engaging, commanding, authoritative, and very attractive, we’re hooked from the start. 

Don’t ask about the title.  I naively expected something like a show about domestic hygiene, perhaps, but...  Anyway...

The show begins in a totally unexpected way: a very funny and inventive musical spoof.  Two nuns (!) in full, white habits - tall Malarski and diminutive partner Ash Goodison (whom we thought was box office and usher) – sing together a classical hymn in beautiful, ethereal harmony.  It’s moving – and puzzling.  But soon they’re checking each other out – much side-eye - and the singing becomes competition – not just who’s louder, or who can drown out the other, but who can completely change the musical style.  And here, apart from the joke, the two demonstrate their musical range – classical art song, all the way through to jazz plus electronic effects – manipulated by Malarski.  It’s great, clever, amazing – a highly original opening to the show.  But then it ends.  That’s it.  Blackout.  The nuns scurry off stage, the habits come off – and Goodison disappears (for now).

And that, unfortunately, is the nature of That’s the Way the Mop Flaps.  Brilliant sketches or items or moments – like the nuns - that have little or nothing to do with each other and linked by blackouts or sometimes a minimal costume change.  A bit of this, a bit of that.  There’s a funny but touching moment when tall Malarski describes people’s startled reactions when she and small Goodison (who comes up to Malarski’s elbow) go out for a walk, but even funnier is the description of Goodison parking their car.  An elderly gent stops and asks: ‘Does that boy have a licence?’  In a flash Malarski puts this snarky busybody on the pavement with: ‘I don’t think so but he’s very good at parallel parking.’

But then... that’s over too.  No more jokes about relative sizes.  On to the next.  And the next is good too.  Malarski in a wig and some costume jewellery on the art of creating characters – and demonstrating (again) what a superb jazz singer she is. Later, Goodison is bullied while wearing a chicken suit.  Etc.   Each item, I stress, witty, funny, beautifully executed, pitched at just the right level.  But bits.

I wonder if what’s happened here is that after the big success of Malarski’s and Goodison’s Big Dyke Energy – a rather more coherent presentation – they figured they better do something else – and this is it.  As we stumbled down the Club Voltaire stairs into the twilight, we seemed to agree on two things: incredible, talented performers, but scrappy (if brilliant) bitsy material.  That said, I’d go again any time to see Malarski and Goodison just to see what they come up with.

Michael Brindley