MELBOURNE FRINGE: Dash and D'Bree: DEMO

Dash and D'Bree: DEMO
18 September 2015
Fringe Hub, Upstairs at Errol's
to 25 September
melbournefringe.com.au

I don't know how gen-Y Melbourne chicks Dash & D'Bree, didn't win Australia's Got Talent. Clearly Australia isn't ready for their amazingness, but they're finally out of retail and back in a cabaret about being fierce.

Being fierce is more than outfits made from animal print or Julie Bishop’s stare. Fierce is doing what your terrified of, knowing how to wear a huge cock, and being each other’s best selfies.

Dash and D’Bree (Hayley Butcher and Karina Mroz) is character comedy at it’s best. They find the heart and vulnerability in the ridiculously grotesque, and ensure that getting older doesn’t mean growing up.


This was on AussieTheatre.com.

Meanwhile, the have a web series.

Review: Dash and D'Bree Take It...

MICF 2011
Dash and D'Bree Take It...
1 April 2011
Portland Hotel
to 10 April
www.comedyfestival.com.au

As a middle-aged spunk rat who likes to browse the Laura Ashley sales rack at my leisure, Dash and D'Bree are everything I despise about shopping and gen Y;  no wonder I adore them.

I first wandered into a mall where they worked in 2009. They've since been fired from every off-the-rack fash boot in the suburb, but the Dotti Girl Clearance Outlet has two vacancies and the girls might have matured enough to last a whole day.

Katrina Mroz and Hayley Butcher created their grotesquely gorgeous duo after meeting at St Martins Youth Arts Centre. Self-involved, ridiculously dressed and dreaming about their totes orig song for Australia's Got Talent, their diet of Aero bars and UDLs keeps them in shape for any karaoke bar, and work would be perfs if the customers wouldn't bother them.

Satire that doesn't totes come from understanding is a waste of time. Like the only really funny Adelaide jokes are from people who live(d) in Adelaide, the only peeps who can satirise gen Y with enough love to make it rib-aching funny are those who don't believe that anyone could live without an iPhone and think it's cool (people still say cool, right?) to live with your parents in your 20s.

And it's the twenty-somethings who can't get enough of Dash and D'Bree. They recognise themselves and are laughing with them.  Oldies may still be laughing at, but we can see Rod Quantock (over 40s) or Eddie Perfect (over 30s) for our generational in-jokes.

With Wes Snelling at the directorial reins, Take It... is more sketch than story, but this is perfect for an early-evening Comedy Festival show in the bar of a hotel. And there are divine new atrocious song and dance numbers (go just to find out what UDL stands for) and new characters. When they make their tv show (I still think they're heading towards Kath and Kim status), there will be room for story and for the hint of vulnerability and that is going to take them into everyone's hearts.

And if you see me pulling my sequined hot pants out of my camel toe, well you'd better go to Dash and D'Bree's show and blame them in person.

This review appears on AussieTheate.com

Re tale

Melbourne International Comedy Festival 2009
Re tale
22 April 2009
St Martins

They evoke a universal sense of fear and force us to stay at home, but we know we cannot avoid them or block out their squealing of, “Hi Babe, ya looking for something for a particular special occasion?”

Re Tale introduces gen Y retail assistants D’Bree, the penis flytrap, and Dash, who is happy to wait for mannequin-perfect love. They work in Faux Bo Ho, but their over-dressed, self-involved and falsely enthusiastic clonettes lurk in most retail stores. Yesterday, I was accosted by one in a health food store and, no, I didn’t need any help picking out my packet of tofu!

Katrina Mroz and Hayley Butcher’s creations are on their way to being household names. Already creating gales of genuine laughter, it’s hard not to compare them to fellow St Martins’ alumni Gina Riley and Jane Turner. Like Kath and Kim, D’Bree and Dash are everything loud, bright and crass that inhabits suburban shopping malls. We instantly recognize the perfectly captured language and attitude and love to laugh at them – because we are beyond such pettiness. What is missing is the touch that lets us recognise ourselves in them. We laugh at Kath and Kim, but we also laugh with them, because we reluctantly glimpse our own frizzy perm or jewelled g-string. D’Bree and Dash are superficial and stupid, but we need more hope of seeing their decent, caring and normal side. Of course, they must never fulfil our hope – but a touch of reality would bring us closer to loving them even more.

Re Tale has already been tightened and well-shaped by director Anniene Stockton, but will continue to improve with some work on the actual tale. At this stage the piece is mainly character and joke with a predictable story tacked around it. The complication and trouble comes in too late and is solved too easily and quickly. To get Re-Tale to the next stage (sold out shows, telly series and classrooms full of tween fans squealing, “I’m a cock magnet”) it needs a story that is as good as the characters. I would have loved to see the painful consequences from their previous nights antics, and know why the threat of losing their job is so significant - couldn’t they just move to Supre?.

There’s only a couple more performances of Re Tale left and it’s well worth getting away from the city venues and jumping on a tram to St Martins in South Yarra. I really hope this isn’t the last we see of the Ds, because they are well on the road to becoming unforgettable.

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.