Theatre Review – Six Chick Flicks

One of the things that I love about going to the theatre is that you are never sure what you are going to see. There tends not to be any trailers like when you go and see a film so all you know is what it says on the flyers. Even with Shakespeare, there are so many adaptations and reimaginings nowadays that things can be very far from what you remember from your school days. So Six Chick Flicks could have been anything really. What it turned out to be was a two person show featuring KK Apple and Kerry Ipema parodying, well, surprise surprise, six chick flicks!

The shows full title is Six Chick Flicks or a Legally Blonde Pretty Woman Dirty Danced on the Beaches while writing a Notebook on the Titanic. As you might guess, to fully perform all those films in full would run to around twelve hours depending on how much notice you took of all the various credits sequences! What we got though, was around two hours of high speed, high energy entertainment. The two performers were spell binding and managed to cram so much into the performance. Especially as they also managed to squeeze in The Holiday, You’ve Got Mail, and Moulin Rouge!

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I Can Only Parody Stuff I Love

I’m not sure how much of Six Chick Flicks was scripted, some of it must have been, but both KK and Kerry are skilled improv artists. The three film parodies that I said above had been squeezed in came about following suggestions shouted by the audience. Now I know that there is a certain amount of flexibility in those situations; “I heard {title}” when the 99% of the audience had been shouting something else. To be honest though, I had heard the titles in question so I was happy that they were genuine audience shouts. Besides, there are hundreds of chick flicks so if they have a pre-prepared bit for each of them then they deserve to get away with it!

However, there was another element to the show which couldn’t have been pre-planned. In the lobby was a stand with pens, bits of paper, and a bowl. There was a sign above it saying “Tell us your meet-cute” and the audience were invited to write a few lines about how they met someone in their lives. It could be a friend, partner, lover, nemesis…anyone really. These were written during the interval and made up an entertaining start to the second half. But the point I’m trying to make is that some of those audience comments made their way into the film parodies later on. So my guess is that the main part of the show is meticulously rehearsed but they don’t let their improv chops gather dust either.

Satire Is A Lesson, Parody Is A Game

And I have no doubt that Six Chick Flicks is meticulously rehearsed. The choreography, the sound effects, the dialogue, the lighting were all spot on. To be honest, they had to be. I can imagine that there were a fair few bumps and bruises during rehearsals while they got their timing right. It was fast and fluent. They managed to get all of the stories across in, about, ten to fifteen minutes per scene. They were delightfully minimalist too. The stage was empty apart from a box in the middle and Kerry and KK managed to portray dozens of characters only using a wig, a jacket, a T-shirt and a hair band! That sort of characterisation takes hard work and discipline. To make it look so effortless is an art.

Finally, and probably most importantly, did Six Chick Flicks work as parody? In short, yes! It was very funny and also very accurate. Although the different scenarios were introduced you could tell what they were within a few lines. I don’t think that I was the target demographic for the performance; out of an audience of around a hundred I was one of three men. That didn’t stop me enjoying the whole performance. Some bits were definitely aimed at the majority of the audience but I just happily let those bits wash over me. It was cleverly done, it was very funny, and it rang a lot of bells if you’d seen any of the films portrayed. If you get the chance, go and see it.

Performance Grade: A+