There is an awful lot of comedy ( and a lot of awful comedy) at the Edinburgh fringe festival and generally its style dominates the time of day it appears. Free, gentle and sketch shows normally appear from lunch-time to early evening when the stage (literally) is left to stand-up and more aggressive and risque acts. This usually means that fans of sketch comedy are struggling to see anything after 8.00 pm.
This gap in the market was exploited last year by the arrival of " Late Night Gimp Fight". The title explains why they do not appear at the Pleasance Courtyard before 10.30 pm.
The opening theme song in obligatory Gimp masks sets the scene and we are off into a sequence
of short sketches. Gradually though the early euphoria of the audience dwindles away to polite applause as we see a succession of dismal sketches. One about gladiators is poor but better than one regarding a confused terminal diagnosis that I last laughed at in the 1980's and I won't mention the sequence about milking animals.
Even the clever use of clips showing famous videos with " Late Night Gimp Fight" imposed over classic lyrics began to wear thin. But just when I was mentally preparing to adapt Mitchell & Webb's classic sketch about writing sketches into " Hit, Miss, Miss, Miss, Miss etc" they re-found their form.
An impressive fight scene & enactment of Saving Private Ryan's famous " Sssh" death scene stopped this slide and started the trend of good returning sketches. The video pen pictures of the performers improved the links and suddenly they produced increasingly rare comedy moments, hysterical songs, including a musically brilliant rap and a stunning version of " Riot Cell Tango" from Chicago about how they lost their virginity.
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The best sketches were cleverer with more impressive word-play than I expected, proving you shouldn't tell a sketch group by its title. The highs they hit made the inclusion of some obviously weak material mystifying and rather annoying. This is a potential 5 star show which disappointingly shot itself in the foot.
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