New Art Club's Extraordinary World

The history of comedy is littered with great double acts. Laurel & Hardy, Morecambe & Wise, French & Saunders, Fry & Laurie, The two Ronnies... It’s all about chemistry, and timing, and balance. Pete Shenton and Tom Roden, who bring their unique blend of stand-up and interpretative dance to the Gilded Balloon, sadly have none of these things.

Extraordinary World consists largely of Shenton and Roden performing a series of painfully and purposefully bad dance routines with titles like 'Hamster in a Wheel', 'Bum Rush', and 'The Backup Singers'. There’s not much more to it than that, as the introductory banter before each routine aims for Mitchell & Webb but ends up closer to Keith & Orville. One repeated refrain manages the dubious achievement of sounding tired the first time it’s used, and by the third call-back the laughs have all but run out.

There weren’t all that many laughs to begin with. A dozen in a one-hour show – which works out around one chuckle every five minutes – is just not good enough.

The half of the audience whose seats allowed them to see the entire stage seemed to heartily enjoy such numbers as 'The Ping Pong Dance' and 'The Girl with the Shitty Shoe', but to describe this show as patchy would be either generous or outright dishonest. Morecambe and Wise proved that, done right, comedy and choreography can combine to devastating effect. Shenton and Roden seem determined to prove them wrong.