A small theatre above a characterful pub in Camden played host to Fresh Femmes’ launch night. How fresh can a company whose title rejigs the infamously practical FemFresh brand be? Pretty damn fresh. Expecting an hour brimming with feminist maxims preached to the rafters and over-hammed until all value is lost, I was relieved that the feminism was presented as an undercurrent, carrying comedy, wit and an impressive amount of intelligence.

Fresh Femmes is formed by and comprised of young (under-23) female voices, talking without pretension. We were promised an evening of ‘good girls telling naughty stories’ and that is precisely what we got in bucket loads and those stories were told, in the spirit of variety, via mediums of burlesque, theatre, comedy and performance poetry.

Fresh Femmes is the brain child of three old school friends (Lottie Manzi Davies, Harriet Fenton and Fran McGrath) who noted that, for them, the theatrical world is lacking in two areas: variety and boobs. They have officially set about changing this and despite being at the very inception of this process they are doing so properly with some pretty immaculate programming and memorable branding.

As for the line-up, well that was a pick and mix of genre, style and standard. It opened with a burlesque number from the very beautiful Athena Beauvoir in scantily clad scarlet. The performance was a little haphazard, dropping fans, wrestling with corsets and at one legs akimbo moment I saw far more than I bargained for. She could also have done with more of an introduction rather than walking onto a silent stage to a half-unsuspecting audience.

Next up, new on the scene performance poet Kit Finnie who instantaneously engaged her audience with colloquial one-liners and her clever account of relatable experiences and the recognisable obscurities of the female mind. Not to generalise sweepingly but poetry doesn’t tend to the most accessible of forms but Finnie makes it ripe and ready for the taking for every single member of the audience.

Theatrical comedy duo Sigmund’s Baby explore multimedia, film, voiceover and even mime. They hilariously and thought-provokingly take the audience through iconic female figures (including Grace Kelly, Beyoncé and the Disney Princesses) in all their sexuality, femininity and self-awareness. These two girls were completely on-point in both their delivery and concept.

The second performance poet of the night, Megan Beech, is clearly no stranger to the circuit. She has developed a clear style and is shiningly confident of her own work that is incredibly intelligent and witty. The strength of her work comes in her reference to popular culture or childhood anecdotes, losing the audience slightly when she interweaves very specific literary references that, unless you’ve just been studying that particular writer or genre, might need more context. Poetry probably doesn’t need to be made any less accessible.

The headline act, founder Lottie Manzi Davies’s stand-up routine ‘Desert Island Dicks’ (great title), involved a slide show, an inflatable paradise and a documentation of the dating dilemmas inherent in a one-woman, desperate mission to find love. Davies transported the audience to her island and had us all wrapped around her little finger as she told us anecdotes, showed us evidence (which she later assured me was absolutely historically accurate) of every relationship conundrum from the unfathomable Tinder to obsessive mothers of boyfriends. Whether we wanted to admit it or not, we’d all been there and that’s precisely what made us belly laugh and wish that her set didn’t need to end.

I feel rather confident that I have caught Fresh Femmes at the beginning of something great. It needs some polishing and perhaps a compere to make the acts seem less random and provide a structure to the evening as a whole. As soon as the date is released for next month’s showcase of female talent I will pen it in my diary and book it sharpish.

Fresh is playing at Etcetera Theatre monthly. For more information and tickets, see the Etcetera Theatre website, or the Fresh Femmes website.