*** If the world was a fair place and success was always based on talent alone then Quartette would be a household name.

And the Spice Girls would never have sold 20 million records in the few years since they burst onto the scene. They would never have made several million dollars each, would never have rubbed shoulders with Royalty or been admired and lusted after the world over.

Unfortunately the world is not a fair place.

The Spice Girls are every marketing company's dream and Quartette are delightful to listen to but, well let's just say ten million schoolgirls are never going to want to play with Quartette dolls or argue over who's going to be the brunette in make-believe games.

Don't get me wrong I loved listening to Quartette so much that I bought the CD after the show on Friday night.

Each of these four women -- Sylvia Tyson, Cindy Church, Caitlin Hanford and Gwen Swick -- are extraordinarily talented and it was easy to just sit back, close my eyes and lose myself completely in their rich, dreamy voices.

The problem occurred when I opened my eyes again -- they simply lacked stage presence.

On their own these are very attractive women but a show is meant to be a show and on international standards this was more like watching a rehearsal with only a quiet effort from the performers to add any sparkle.

Perhaps each of the singers -- who have all tasted meteoric success on their own -- are used to being the star of the show and tone that appeal down when they perform together, leaving the audience with no star to embrace.

As a concert critic I'm not interested in whether performers are drop-dead gorgeous or not. You've only got to see a Rolling Stones concert to see that looks don't have anything to do with verve and show-stopping cha-cha-cha.

Mick Jagger is no Adonis but his sex appeal and stage presence is legendary -- and he works very hard in live performances to achieve that, something which I felt was lacking on Friday night.

The problem wasn't the frumpy outfits -- although two mismatched dark suits, a pinafore which resembled a maternity dress (perfectly fine if a woman is pregnant) and a faux leopard-skin cardigan seemed a little unpolished.

There are plenty of big names who can carry a sell-out performance dressed in their favourite jeans and an old T-shirt.

And Quartette could do that too if they injected enough dazzling, brilliant panache to project their pleasant Canadian wagon onto the higher plain which an international audience demands.

Leaving aside that shortfall, the singing of the four women who make up Quartette was gutsy, soulful and without flaw particularly on plaintive songs like Denim Blue Eyes.

The ensemble managed to make songs like that one -- a love song lamenting the closing down of small family farms -- drip with angst.

The applause from the audience was certainly rousing and it continued long enough for Quartette to feel obliged enough to come back onstage and belt out a purely vocal encore right from the heart.

Their maturity put real feeling into their songs -- many of which they wrote themselves. These girls have seen a bit of life, loved and lost and they've watched the world change in their time.

All that richness of emotion comes through in their songs which vary in genre from Gospel to blues to heel-stomping, heart-wrenching country and western.

They sounded good enough to get plenty of feet in the audience tapping along and I bet many audience members would still be singing the catchy lyrics the next day.

Deidre Stark Ho hum: Quartette -- Sylvia Tyson, Cindy Church, Caitlin Hanford and Gwen Swick -- sounded heavenly but had all the stage presence of a wet fish.

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