Review: Peacock and Gamble: Heart-Throbs – Newcastle Stand

Surreal Japanese game shows, virtual dating and show-tunes make up just some of the absurdity contained within podcast heroes Peacock and Gamble‘s new show.

If that sounds like your sort of thing, then you’re in for an absolute treat. If it doesn’t, then you’re probably dead inside, and should give up on life.

Putting a modern, often near-the-knuckle edge on the classic double act, much of the joy to be had from their performance is watching mischievous man-child Ray Peacock push straight-man Ed Gamble to the brink of his sanity with his absurd antics.

In the pair’s 2012 show, Peacock and Gamble Don’t Even Want To Be On Telly Anyway, they bemoaned their perceived lack of success, and made fraught attempts to attain the airtime they believed they deserved.

Relentlessly impish and often surreal, Heart Throbs is its theoretical sequel, finding the hapless duo now beloved in Japan, and the new faces of omnipresent dairy tyrants Yuki Butter.

As well as singing the praises of their buttery overlords, the show also touches on the tensions of the partnership; Ray’s outlandish, egocentric behavior has made him the stand-out star, leaving Ed to follow around in his shadow, picking up his mess.

Tipping the balance of the relationship allows Peacock and Gamble to push their roles to the extreme, wringing maximum lunacy, frustration and surprising poignancy out of their act.

With stand alone skits alongside pieces of the show’s arc, it’s essentially a sketch show that never quite feels like a sketch show.

So naturally charming are the twosome, so hysterically engaging is the material, so ardent is the tone they set, it’s exactly the sort of show you can get lost in.

In fact, in the best possible way, it barely even feels like a show; the structure is there, the theme is established, yet so utterly absorbing and unrelenting is the silliness of it all, there is no legroom to consider it as a whole.

While there are plenty of in-jokes for P&G loyalists – fan favorite and unofficial third member Naughty Keith makes numerous passing appearances – the show is entirely accessible.

This is comedy in its most natural, basic form; uncompromisingly, inclusive, played for all out idiocy and ultimately, unrestrained delight.

Date of live review: Tuesday 22 October 2013

Peacock and Gamble return to the North East in March, with shows in Whitby and Darlington. Click for tickets.