ADC Mainshow
3 Stars

I don’t really like the Footlights. I hate the smug self-entitlement, as though being able to say “I have no fingers” in a high-pitched voice on the ADC stage makes you the next Fry, Laurie, or (God help you) Greer. I also don’t like the equation ‘fresh comedy = weird and edgy comedy’. So, when the 125th Spring Review, billed as a suitably-wacky “occasionally true history of stuff”, started with a sketch about internet forum users, the Holocaust (“Edgy? Check!”), terrorism (“Double check!”), and Aristotle (“Weird dead guy with a beard? Check!”), I was ready to give it a good kicking.

But I can’t. After that dud first sketch, the pace increased and produced some genuinely funny ideas. The first serious laughs of the show came with a Mafia sketch that used Adam Hollingworth’s impeccable Marlon Brando impersonation, and an innovative use of cutlery, to create something that played out like Monty Python doing The Godfather.

After that, the ideas flowed; the writers’ focus on historical events revealing its strengths: Dinosaur Top Trumps segued into the assassination of Thomas Becket and an inspired reimagining of the slave trade’s origins. The first half concluded with two songs: one, an attempt to fit all 267 popes into the Beach Boys’ ‘Barbara Ann’; the second a magnificently exuberant celebration of machines delivered by James Walker to some stony-faced Luddites.

The second half started with similar energy, in another song imagining Jesus as a Brooklyn rapper. Riley was again superb as the incomprehensible French disciple, ‘Phillipe’. Whilst the rest of the show didn’t match this, it did give the consistently-excellent Lucy Evans room to show she could do more than play it straight, as well as foregrounding the rest of the cast’s ability to play every role with aplomb, energy, and superb timing.

Why no more stars? In truth, it just felt slightly shoddy. Regular technical faults undermined the actors’ hard work and made it seem under-rehearsed. Whilst many of the ideas in the show were (to cite a papal authority) ‘Hilarius’, ultimately, the execution failed; the audience regularly left waiting for a punchline that never came.

If you’re not bothered by these technicalities, add another star to those I’ve given it. And go: in parts, this really is a very funny and clever show. It’s just those other parts that leave you wanting more, and better.

George Reynolds