By James Murphy
Partners in comedy, Samantha LeClaire and Jennifer Laycock commence Fashion 4 Passion by
barrelling down the Yurt’s aisle with an energy that they sustain for the show’s entire fifty minutes
of sketches and songs, with a side serving of sermons.
With Fashion 4 Passion, millennial physical comedians LeClaire and Laycock have sewn together a
show that is pitched squarely at the influencer generation, with its sketches skewering the toxic
positivity of Instagrammers and the societal carnage wrought by online fast fashion peddlers. Every
five minutes the pair, clad in all black and topped with berets, duck behind a rainbow coloured
clothes rack, then explode out dressed anew for a sketch from a different point of view.
LeClaire and Laycock figuratively and literally bounce off each other, and the audience; the Yurt
could burst with their enthusiasm. Even in such intimate surrounds, even while staring eye ball to
eye ball with the crowd, the duo show no fear when making clowns of themselves. It is a scatter gun
fifty minutes, and the jokes-per-minute speedometer is off the dial. Some jokes, mainly the spoken
comedy, sometimes veer off course, but another gag will then race on by. Both artists have clearly
spent years on honing their mind muscle connections, and have a pink Supre shopping bag full of
funny faces and silly walks. Some sketches are universally relatable, while others fit more within the
millennial niche; even when the sketch context is foreign, though, there is physical humour and
vocal impersonations as diversions.
While this show’s outer fabric is absurdity, it is delicately stuffed with a political message that rarely
feels garish. LeClaire and Laycock make a very striking comedic outfit, with just a few creases that
will be easy to iron out.
Four stars
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