Review by Steve Bennett

These gimps may very well want to keep their faces covered after some of the sketches in a show that’s lively, noisy, boisterous – but rarely as inventive as it thinks it is.

Many scenes end with a physical bundle, often thanks to the repeatedly returning character of a WWE wrestler, stripping to the waist and starting fake fights. Indeed, they like getting their kit off – a dinosaur in a low-budget re-creation of Jurassic Park is a man in his undies, as is a disturbing office colleague in another scene

This broad, unsubtle physicality continues as they enact a pop video Bonnie Tyler’s Total Eclipse Of The Heart, which involves a bloke dry-humping another bloke in a frock from behind, then the positions are reversed. The gimp theme is returned to a few times over the 50 minutes, too, and there’s some references to porn.

You may think this sounds hilarious – and indeed much of the audience whooped and hollered and stamped their feet through such base material, to such an extent that I suspected they must have been either friends of the five performers, or very, very drunk.

It largely left me cold, for although you can detect an easy likeability behind the big-performance bluster of all those on stage, their writing is decidedly crude, aiming for lowest common-denominator. But maybe I should have guessed that from the title. Gimps aren’t subtle.

Review date: 1 Sep 2009
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett