Usually when a play billed as a comedy get little to no laughs, it’s about as painful as passing kidney stones. But a funny thing about while with Alice and Sidney. I hardly laughed and neither did the audience but we still very much cared about these two young women. Katie Fournell and Danielle Rishuag have a likable, spunky stage charisma that carries over a pedestrian plotline that tries for witty one-liners but doesn’t get the laughs. Rishuag as Alice Green is an actress with a career going off the rails, reduced to doing a strip tease at a club run by her creepy boyfriend. Fournell as Sidney is drama student who idolizes Alice until she learns of her favourite actor’s new gig, and drops out of school in disgust. A chance meeting leads to an arrangement for Alice to write and perform a new children’s puppet show with Sydney producing. There are financial problems, the girls bond and then fight, and Mitch meddles in their affairs, but the girls barrel through and become real friends. Alice and Sydney is the female version of bromance comedy. Even without the funny, I was entertained and I wanted to see two actors in more plays. My recommendation: hire a good joke writer and run this play again in the 2011.

Two and a half out of five stars.