Where would the all-male sketch troupe be without homoeroticism and jokes about kiddy fiddling? Here we have five young gents donning wrestling masks and performing comic skits in questionable taste. But credit to the quintet for making sexual deviance not just the butt of the joke, but the visual concept for the entire set.
The show has been staged by Steve Marmion, recently appointed artistic director of Soho theatre, and the directorial touch is evident in a choreographed opening, in which the five gimps burst out of laundry bags to sing their high-octane theme tune. From then on, the energy seldom drops, as scenes intercut with video clips that edit gimp activity into famous film footage. Here, Janet Leigh's shower in Hitchcock's Psycho is interrupted by an apologetic man in a bondage mask, and Oliver Twist asks for an extra portion of – well, you don't want to know.
There are plenty such punchlines, which rely on the diminishing mirth generated by nudity or wrong sex. It's sometimes frustrating, as when first-gimp-among-equals Richard Campbell plays a cuckolded driving instructor – a subtle scene that gives way to puerility. But it's all performed without cynicism, and with the gusto to reanimate old classics, such as the preposterous extension of limbs behind the back of a concealing screen. Best of all is when two gimps lie on their backs with hooded sweatshirts worn upside-down on their legs, thus creating a puppet romance played out to an Aerosmith soundtrack. It's as funny as it is bizarrely beautiful, and proves that these gimps are at their best when their tenderness is unmasked.
