by RAF KATIGBAK

Going to see a Ladies Luncheon show is exactly like sitting in at high tea at a five-star country club, except your hosts sing things like, “Get your sticky balls off my thighs” in hip hop/soda-pop harmonies, and use words like “snatch.” Oh, and everyone is dressed up like a cowboy or a character from Star Wars. This hilarious slice of surrealism is courtesy of Anisa Lee, Sarah Lee and Laurel Lee, aka Ladies Luncheon, three sophisticated socialites that swear like sailors.

“People love a good juxtaposition, don’t you know,” winks Anisa Lee, whose off-hand references to obscure Star Trek ephemera make her the geekiest of the bunch. “We like to say things that women think a lot, but would never say in public,” continues Laurel Lee who, alongside Sarah Lee, makes up the musical backbone of the troupe, switching between guitar and keyboard.

But beyond being prim and proper pottymouths, Ladies Luncheon revel in telling it like it is, and any subject is fodder for their musical mockery, from casual Fridays to Kevin Bacon, bodily functions, venereal disease and of course sex (one crowd favourite being “Swedish (or Sweet-Ass?) Jean Disease,” about a steamy, impromptu encounter in a le Château liquidation outlet). Each subtle layer of raunch is delivered with a candy-flavoured pink frosting that makes the brutal honesty not only easy to swallow, but side-splittingly tasty to boot.

While it’s obvious they don’t take themselves too seriously, there are two things that they do. The first is their matching Dollar Store calculator watches (“It has a date and time function,” yelps Anisa Lee, “and it can spell ‘boobless!’”). The second is throwing a really great theme party.

With backgrounds in theatre and visual arts, the trio relish any chance to involve the audience in the act, and this Thursday’s Melekalikilakakillchewbaka: A Bright Hawaiian Christmas Stampede is no exception. “As for audience participaction, everyone may be asked to join in and learn ‘the Hukilau,’” explains Sarah Lee, “which Anisa learned in ninth grade P.E. and has been sharing with anyone who’ll let her ever since.”

Check it out, and if it works for you, you can take the participation to the next level and bust out your own South Pacific soirée by following the rules laid down by Ladies Luncheon in the sidebar to this article!

With Li’l Andy and Head Smashed in Buffalo Jump at Théâtre Ste-Catherine tonight, Thursday, Dec. 8, 9 p.m., $10 ($8 if you come dressed in surfer, Hawaiian, cowboy or Star Wars attire, or a combination thereof)

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