This is clever, witty stuff.  The clever bits I picked up on were very clever indeed, though I am sure that some of them must have flown over my head given the late hour.  However, the more obvious stuff is also very amusing.  The heights of hilarity are not scaled in every sketch, but the show certainly entertains the audience, even if it rarely skewers them with a needle and thread.

I found it interesting that most of the sketches are not girl on girl in their characters.  For all the emphasis put on the ‘two-woman’ thing in the publicity material, and the combative scheduling of boys vs. girls in the line-up of this week’s lateshows, Beard is not a reaction against the ballsy, male-dominated comic arena.  Rosa Robson and Matilda Wnek just get on with being funny.

The leading ladies are perfectly matched with complementing styles.  There are echoes of director Adam Lawrence’s styles in Robson's stage manner.  Immediate characterisation is her forte, and she has perfect control as she sends her limbs and facial features flying.  Wnek, on the other hand, is at her strongest when she has some time to develop a character.  She is able to take scenes to crescendos of extraordinary awkwardness armed with only thirty seconds and a half-decent premise.

However, to call this a two-woman comedy is more than a little mean to the bloke on the piano.  In addition to his tinkling skills, Stephen Bermingham shows some genuine comic ability, seeming to know – for the most part – when his subtle interventions of facial expression and gesture would be welcome.

Snappy scene changes mean a great deal is packed into the hour.  We are promised over 120 characters, and I do believe we get them.  There are some callbacks and some repeated jokes; but as many of these last not much more than twenty seconds each, they never go stale.  Rather, they accumulate to bring the show together, creating a unity is not laboured by an ingenious but wearisome last hurrah of a sketch.  This show’s major success is that, while avoiding the feel of a compilation of smoker excerpts, its coherence is allowed to speak for itself.