Theatre: The Footlights Spring Revue
ADC Mainshow
My anticipation had been building for a good month in advance for this show. Last year’s Revue was brilliant. I had seen sketches by the writers, Owen, Fiddamen and Ashenden, at smokers, and laughed uncomfortably hard. Good. Clean. Men., again incorporating the aforementioned trio, was my comedy highlight of last year, let alone the term. Rightfully, People Watching should’ve been the comedy highlight of my Cambridge life. Was it? Not quite. By quite a bit.
The concept – genuinely exciting. God is fed up with the idiocy of human kind and decides it’s time for an apocalypse. The first act is a series of sketches that illustrate this idiocy, introduced and occasionally narrated by the gloriously odd and wonderfully named William Seaward, the angel charged with recording and monitoring this behaviour. I hope Stephen Fry doesn’t need his voice back, because it suits Seaward’s eccentricity and faultless delivery rather well. He was the perfect opener to the show, although after a while you did start to notice that your laughter was more in response to the incongruous movements of his eyebrows rather than the lines. This became a general theme – the performers elevated their admittedly funny script to a hilarious one – and not something I was expecting to have to rely on. Don’t get me wrong, these men can write. There are some fantastic one-liners and beautifully crafted concepts. But they really did have a bloody good cast, which ensured some of the more convoluted jokes still got a laugh, when, to be honest, they didn’t always deserve one.
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Eventually, it seemed to fall into that old Cambridge comedy trap: an exercise in demonstrating the ability to string together the most random, intellectually telling and tenuous sentences in the most abstracted scenarios known to man. After two hours, you felt slightly overwhelmed for all the wrong reasons. It could’ve done with a fair few more punch lines, too. The brilliant set-ups felt a bit wasted when the actors left the stage without as much as a giggle. The second act presented a real opportunity to move away from this, and the reappearances of characters from previous scenarios were a welcome stab at continuity. Archie’s crusade was thoroughly endearing, and although every member of the cast was brilliant, James Moran excelled even his performance in Armageddapocalypse 2: The Explosioning, as Uncle Malevolence. You’ll see what I mean.
I am writing as a critic, not an audience member. I laughed quite a lot. Just not as much as I was expecting to. This is not a Smoker, it is an ADC mainshow, and as such I was expecting something with a bit more cohesion and bit less of the let’s-see-how-many-references-we-can-fit-into-the-joke jokes. With two hours to fill, however, I suppose we can allow some lee-way for a few duff sketches, which nevertheless usually contained at least one pleasing turn of phrase.
The Spring Revue is already sold out. For those of you who bought tickets – well done, you will have a great night. For those of you who didn’t – don’t worry, there’s more Footlights comedy coming next week in the form of Keith Akushie’s Hostage. You will be missing some flashes of genius, and, equally importantly, actual juggling, but you won't be missing a comedy highlight of Cambridge life.
