Yellowknife (Feb 13/04) - Girl talk isn't the stuff of most plays. Most plays -- most serious, important plays -- revolve around big ideas and philosophy and the meaning of life, not women chatting about sex.

Sex Tips for Modern Girls, which finishes its run at Lucille's Cabaret tomorrow, takes girl talk out of the washroom stalls and into the spotlight, making the transition successfully just by its sheer audacity.

Brenda Lowen, Talina Boon and Ada Timmins sang up a storm and Robin Williams and Shane LeBouthillier made their entrances and exits with ease, keeping the pace quick and the pulse of the piece strong.

The three female characters start out as superficial stereotypes (Lowen's character is the anxious wallflower, Timmins the neat professional and Boon the party girl) but resolve into "real women" by the end of the play as they learn more about each other through their shared stories, fantasies and a hilarious take on the fairy tale of the princess and the frog who turns into a handsome prince.

The mostly-female audience went nuts for certain numbers, most notably the bathtime and the anatomy lesson sung like a hymn, where the three actresses worked together to become the parts they were singing about.

Even the cast couldn't keep a straight face after that little ditty. Lowen had to take a moment and compose herself before moving into her next serious monologue.

But it wasn't all about the girls.

Williams and LeBouthillier earned laughs of their own with their outrageous costumes and antics, trying to sum up all the various stereotypical men the ladies had dated over the years. At the end of act one, clad only in boxers, they asked musically if they were just being exploited by women, then finished up by declaring the bar open.

Foreman peppered the script liberally with local landmarks and the cast even referred to people in the audience by name. And now a word to the men in the audience.

Aside from one guy who covered his eyes during some of the raunchier numbers (his ears might have been a wiser choice), men seemed to enjoy the play as much as the ladies, although the humour was often gender-specific. It's not as if guys would relate that well to tales of the first period and mothers' reactions to same. ("I'm so sorry," repeated again and again.)

And the audience anthropology analysis continued as I noticed that, curiously, the older people in the audience seemed to be the ones whooping it up most during the show, while the younger folk occasionally cringed. So much for older folk being more conservative.

And even with the frank humour that made up most of the show, there were a few serious pauses for thought. My favourite line was when Timmins' deadpanned "My daughter nearly drowned in a bidet."

Combined with the sumptuous buffet provided by Le Frolic, the evening was a fabulous success. Kudos to the cast, Foreman, and Kitsch In Sync.