Late Night Gimp Fight

Conventional wisdom holds that sketch comedy is a young person's game. So with several Fringe shows under their wrestling masks, is it time for Late Night Gimp Fight to grow up a bit and reject their Gimpish personas? That's the question they raise in their latest offering, undermining their alter-egos from the start in an impressively high-energy intro, before falling out with their on-screen avatars, a feature of Gimp shows from the very beginning.

Unfortunately, although they've returned as a five-piece, this hour rarely touches the juvenile heights and plumbed depths of sublime gratuitousness they've explored in recent years, so the suggestion of them moving on is perhaps more problematic than intended. The most memorable set-piece in the show, featuring Spider-Man as you've never seen, or indeed, wished to see him before, feels reminiscent of previous sketches, while a song dedicated to a “celebrity paedo” is surprisingly po-faced, lacking a payoff to justify its inclusion.

The quintet still carry a tune as well as any and they're not without ambition, performing an elaborately choreographed romance between crash test dummies. There's some enjoyable audience work and their corpsing, especially when recently returned Face Gimp, Richard Campbell, attempts to cram an entire fast food meal into his mouth, is as endearing as ever. Still, their closing Les Miserables-style appeal for acclamation doesn't feel sufficiently earned. Treading in jelly, it feels as if the Gimps need to go away and think long and hard about what's required to eclipse their previous hours.