****
Well I like New Art Club even if the Foster's Award panel doesn't. Dancers-turned-comedians Tom Roden and Pete Shenton have been coming up to the Fringe with unique, idiosyncratic multi-disciplinary shows for years now and have barely had a sniff of lager-based recognition. Ah, well, let's keep them as our best kept secret in comedy then.
Feel About Your Body takes self-image as its theme. The show starts with the duo asking the audience to rate their own appearance from one to ten. There is a bit of low-level audience participation, but nothing to scare the horses. The only really scary bit comes from Pete Shenton, who at one point appears in a pair of real horrorshow bollock-shredding undercrackers. It is not all comedy clothes, Vic & Bob-ish banter and easy laughs though. Shenton also talks wittily and movingly about the heart attack he had in his thirties when his partner was pregnant – probably the second best heart attack story ever, after Richard Pryor's arresting cardiac routine.
As one would expect from these movement specialists there is plenty of physical humour. Shenton is over the top, eccentric and quirky, while Roden is more subtle and restrained – Tommy Cannon to Shenton's Bobby Ball. But in their own special way they are that weird combination of straight man and funny man who are both actually very funny.
There are some nice set-pieces here as well as nice surprises. The duo have great chemistry and an air of loose spontaneity about them that few duos can equal. A song about sheds, which feels improvised but is surely tightly scripted, is one of the highlights, but there are lots of lovely moments in this uplifting hour which it would be a shame to reveal in a review. Needless to say the uninhibited Shenton already does enough revealing for all of us in the show.
