White Noise is the debut sketch comedy show by double act Sisters, Christy White-Spunner and Mark Jones. The premise of the show is that they want to get as famous as possible, as quickly as possible, and so enlist the help of ‘live streaming’ and FaceTime calls to take their sketches global.
The show begins with a promising compilation of supposedly random FaceTime calls where White-Spunner and Jones introduce the concept of their show to strangers from around the world to a variety of reactions. It’s a clever introduction and a nicely inventive way to bring a show on stage.
The duo tackle their name early on in the performance, explaining that they’re obviously not sisters and that if anyone expected “female comedy” then they are going to be disappointed. They make vague references to gender and identity politics and the fact that the show is titled White Noise but after the well executed introduction, this second one just doesn’t hit the mark.
White Noise, in general, has its hits and misses. There are some really genuinely funny sketches – two junkies about to shoot up accidentally finding a body percussion rhythm in their quest to find a vein and DJ Saturday Night, a doctor’s auto-tuned assistant, are particular highlights. The parts of the show that don’t work so well are when the pair veer from their cleverly dark pieces to more obvious vulgar comedy. Sketches that rely on pedophilia and violence against women as their punchline are, at best, lazy.
The show ended on a high with a brilliant sketch that involved two unsuspecting audience members taking on the central roles. The nervous but eager to please audience members combined with White-Spunner’s brilliant turn as the narrator turned stalker is an intelligent, well written and acted sketch that shows this comedy duos full potential.
This dark comedy show won’t disappoint but if Sisters put a little time into perfecting their more intelligent sketches, fully embracing their weird style and ditching the obvious gags, then they could cement themselves as exciting new voices in sketch comedy.