Jane Wickline's sense of humor is a unique flavor of absurdist. Her delivery is devotedly flat. Her perspective is off-kilter with a tendency toward the perverse. Yet her charm is undeniable as she sings about overstaying her welcome at a party or the trouble of falling in love with a psychic. Whether on TikTok, Saturday Night Live, or in her sketch-comedy-musical Dukes opposite collaborator Liva Pierce, her performance style evokes that surreal point at a slumber party where your sleep-deprived brain is giggly, maybe a bit confused, but ultimately blissful.

Her powers are only enhanced when combined with Pierce, so Dukes, now playing at SoHo Playhouse in New York, is a real trip, like in the way you might wonder if someone slipped you an edible beforehand. Thankfully, it's a collective trip, so surrounded by 170+ fellow passengers, you journey through this bizarre tale of friendship, firemen aspirations, and financial despair, buoyed by waves of laughter.

What's Dukes about?

Written by Wickline and Pierce, Dukes is about two roommates — named Jane and Liva — who hate their jobs and dream of greater things, like finding a missing crystal goose for a handsome reward.

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Walking into this show on a Friday night, I was coincidentally carrying with me recent rewatches of two extraordinary buddy comedies, Barb and Star go to Vista Del Mar and Romy and Michele's High School Reunion. It's with no small measure of delight that I tell you Dukes is well-paired with either.

Wickline and Pierce play clownish versions of themselves, passionate but deeply idiotic. Liva is the Romy, more headstrong and effectively the decision-maker of the two, setting up a double date or instigating a sapphic cucking scene with a willing neighbor. Jane's more the Michele, blithely following her passions for haphazard engineering with little concern for the consequences (like losing her survival job).

But perhaps I'm overemphasizing the plot of Dukes, which is ultimately a framework for ludicrous songs, several of which can be seen on Wickline's TikTok account.

Dukes is at its best in the musical numbers.

Wickline and Pierce's comic personas offer an intentionally stilted awkwardness, reminiscent of another musical comedy duo, Flight of the Conchords. However, while Dukes has toured across America, its stars haven't locked into a thoroughly engaging through line. The sketches, though funny, can feel flimsy, even episodic. But the songs are solidly hilarious.

As with Flight of the Conchords, these zany tunes spring from the lives of Jane and Liva, offering heightened versions of themselves that are outright ludicrous. For instance, in the opening song where they wish for a "new kind of porn," rather than talking graphic sex, they suggest — with straight faces — innovations like "claymation." And it's supremely silly while also feeling like a sly critique of film-bro snobbery. Such a cheeky critique would tie back to the title, *Dukes. *

Early on, the pair ponder their dream, to have enough money and power that they could quit their dumb office jobs and focus on their eccentric hobbies. They could live like dukes — not aristocracy, mind you — but dykes who are dudes. The dream.

From there, each comedian takes on a new role, courtesy of some abused Party City wigs. Pierce in a pink wig becomes a femme love interest for a love song, in which Wickline breaks the fourth wall to eye roll to the audience to sensational effect. Later, she'll plop on a blonde monstrosity that looks like a last-minute Halloween costume of Nicole Kidman. In this guise, Wickline plays a "milf" who asks probing questions about gender identity to Liv, her teenage nonbinary babysitter, who was hoping for a May-December hookup, not a buzzkill heart-to-heart.

Through these scenarios, Wickline and Pierce paint a side-splitting portrait of queer friendship, relishing in the sublimely stupid. The show becomes a celebration of being seen as the oddball you are.

Those who love Wickline's socially awkward appearances on Weekend Update will revel in Dukes, where she is not hemmed in by any expectation to appeal to a commercial audience. In this space, she and Pierce spread their wings and rather than soar, do a chaotic call for weirdos. And it works.

Kristy Puchko is the Entertainment Editor at Mashable. Based in New York City, she's an established film critic and entertainment reporter who has traveled the world on assignment, covered a variety of film festivals, co-hosted movie-focused podcasts, and interviewed a wide array of performers and filmmakers.