Girl Talk - Chichester Observer

Chewing the fat and dishing the dirt... If you thought Girl Talk was just a quaint Neal Hefti and Bobby Troup song from the mid-1960's then you then you needed to pop on your lipstick, high heels, and rubber gloves at least and head on down to Chichester Festival Theatre for one of the best nights out you were likely to have this year.

Individually, Mari Wilson, Barb Jungr and Claire Martin have already staked their claims to musical greatness on record and in cabaret; together, as the diva-licious trio Girl Talk, they could surely storm any stage with a classy and brassy musical revue that proved there is nothing like a dame.

The ridiculously simple idea - dreamed-up around Mari Wilson's kitchen table (what I would give to have been a fly on that formica) - was that the girls sang some of those cheesy pop and popular songs from bygone days originally written for girls by guys.

But in this glamorous and gritty celebration of all things girlie, the sexist and often outrageous lyrics not only made it past the PC brigade but took on a feminine tooth and claw life of their own,

Some of the songs were played for laughs with plenty of scowls and sneers to eke the maximum embarrassment out of the dated words that assumed a woman's place was behind the ironing board, while others were played straight and performed more beautifully than you could possibly imagine.

That this show was such a stonking success was due entirely to its three stars (so superbly accompanied on the piano by Adrian York), who were fated to perform together. Each voice was pitch perfect, each performance of the highest quality.

The result: the three tenors, if ever they ended up in tiaras meowing their way through memories of Doris Day and A Woman's Touch, the unmistakable 60's sound of Chapel of Love and My Guy, and the hilarious country twang od D.I.V.O.R.C.E.