My dictionary defines “gimp” as a lame person or a fishing line, but thanks to the wonders of Wikipedia anyone curious about the more, ahem, recreational meaning can obtain a crash course in S&M outfits. Be warned: sleazy sex references play a major role in this sketch show — a cult hit in Edinburgh — yet it really is worth venturing up the Dean Street stairs to see what is on offer. The best of the compilation is quite brilliant.
Yes, there’s a fair amount of behind-the-bike-shed puerility and flashes of gratuitously cruel humour. Signs placed by the door warn more delicate souls against the prospect of full-frontal male nudity, although compared with recent avant-garde goings-on at Sadler’s Wells, the fleeting display of naked flesh is very mild indeed. (It also amounts to an extremely funny nod in the direction of Malcolm Hardee’s much-loved balloon dancers.) Like Ricky Gervais’s stand-up routines, the script loves to play with taboo subjects. Fortunately, it is done, for the most part, with a lot more wit.
At first, I have to admit, I feared the worst. Some of the weaker homoerotic skits were crowded towards the start of the show, and the fact that the hipper members of the audience seemed determined to laugh at punchlines before they had been delivered was a distraction as well. Still, the material grew more confident by the minute, and the five members of the team — Lee Griffiths, David Moon, Matt Ralph, Paul Richard Biggin and Richard Campbell — were all wonderfully versatile. One of the most inspired sequences has to be the playground confrontation which morphs into a bout of wrestling, fake groans and all.
The venue’s artistic director, Steve Marmion, kept the physical humour rattling along as the boys bounced around the kitchen-sink set used earlier in the evening by the cast of the play Realism. With a video screen running brief clips between scenes, there is a Fast Show pace to proceedings which ensures that the weaker items never linger in the memory. The highlights far outnumber them in any case.
Box office: 020-7478 0100. Runs to Friday