Edinburgh Fringe: Late Night Gimp Fight!/ While You Lie

Going to a late-night comedy show at the Fringe is always taking a risk, not least because every drunken fool in the place, with their oh-so-funny heckles, thinks they’re funnier than the performers. And so it proved at the performance I saw of this deliriously funny sketch comedy, performed by five fit young chaps, in which the payoff to one skit involves one of them going buck naked.

Late Night Gimp Fight!, Pleasance Courtyard ****

Ah, but if only the two over-refreshed women in the front row had known that normally the sketch goes on longer and he would have waved his willy directly in front of them, they wouldn’t have screamed raucously and repeatedly for him to “do it again”. Thanks for spoiling it for the rest of us, ladies...

That skit is the only nudity in a show that has a fair degree of sexual material and that some may consider to be a little high on the blokey scale. The programme of about 20 sketches, written and performed with great verve by David Moon, Lee Griffiths, Matt Ralph, Paul Biggin and Richard Campbell, is fast paced and well constructed, with a good mix of visual, music and running gags. Only occasionally is a sketch on the weak side or a tad too long, but all is forgiven when a cracking one immediately follows.

Music is a big part of the show; one running gag involves pop songs being interrupted and the “Late Night Gimp Fight!” catchphrase inserted at wonderfully incongruous places; similarly film scenes are shown with a gimp inserted doing something of a deviant nature. Some of the humour is base or dark - such as a man breaking bad news to his friend about his son in a woefully inappropriate manner - but the troupe manage to keep the taste meter this side of rank, and that’s a testament to the quality of the writing. It may not always be subtle but it’s clever, and the show is directed by Steve Marmion, newly installed as the artistic director of the Soho Theatre in London, whose theatrical savvy shows.

The group’s most original sketch is a sight gag involving them wearing hooded sweatshirts upside down on their legs while they are lying on the floor to create puppet-like creatures who play out a romance to an Aerosmith track. It’s an inspired piece of comedy in an hour of unremitting laughter. Until 29 August

While You Lie, Traverse **

Honesty, or the lack of it, is at the heart of Sam Holcroft’s new play. Two couples, Ana and Edward, and Chris and Helen, are in disintegrating relationships, and as their lives overlap we hear some home truths about sex and marriage and the lies we tell to those we profess to love.

Ana (Claire Lams), an eastern European immigrant, is needy and vulnerable, and her long-suffering boyfriend Edward finally snaps. He tells her he’s tired of constantly having to reassure her; she leaves him, only to offer herself to her slimy boss, Chris (Steven McNicoll), in return for promotion. He, apparently happily married, readily slips into the “I’m working late at the office”  routine and his pregnant wife, Helen, apparently believes him.

A strange figure, Ike (Leo Wringer), who appears to come from another play, comes among them. He’s a creepy plastic surgeon who performs surgery to keep women tight for their husbands after childbirth and, he says, is raising funds for his charity in Africa, where he helps those scarred by civil war. Helen decides to give him the family savings, and Edward starts sniffing around her but we don’t know if he’s after sex or revenge.

The denouement is risible, as Helen’s baby is ripped out by Ike with a kitchen knife and Chris has sex with her immediately after. It’s all a bit aimless and the writing lacks any real insight. The cast, however, are commendably committed - Andrew Scott-Ramsay as Edward and Pauline Knowles as Helen giving particularly strong performances - in Zinnie Harris’s slick production.
Until 29 August

• Book tickets for both shows on the Edinburgh Fringe website
  
• See theartsdesk's UK Festivals 2010 Round-up
• See what's on in the Edinburgh International Festival 2010 13 August-5 September