I don’t know what I’m expecting to see as I enter the rehearsal space for the Footlights Spring Revue. A melee of people practicing funny voices and galloping around as different characters? Maybe someone standing on the table playing a mime? Or endless piles of absurd props? What I walk in on is a hushed and studious group sitting round a table. The eight members of the Footlights committee and their two directors are working on the details of this most important and, for many of them now in the third year of their degrees, last comedy show. So, comedy isn’t the constant playing and acting that one may imagine; while the live performance of a five night run is certainly on their minds, this is the time to carefully craft the sketch comedy showcase that is the Revue.

I sit down to chat with two of the eight writer-performers, Ellen Robertson and Footlights president Tom Fraser, who have been working on a show that promises to be full of all kinds of comedy and, as I happily mention, will feature a live jazz band. “We wanted to make it a bit of a show. Because we’ve done a lot of smokers and those are usually last minute and rushed. So even if this is last minute and rushed, we wanted a band! It will give it a nice atmosphere”. Although Ellen says this, much more work has gone into this show than a comedy smoker would ever get. They are aiming to make it a spectacle in the most French sense of the word, and the band, as Tom agrees, is one part of a rich humour-filled puzzle: “It makes it so different when you come into the theatre and there’s a band. It’s partly the old school intricate theme”.

The old-school intricate theme is the arc of this year’s revue, under which the hour and a half of sketches loosely fit. It has a vaudeville 1920s variety show aesthetic, under the title 'A Whole Lot Of Bother'. This certainly brings to mind images of exuberance and Ellen is happy to confirm them,“A lot of it is quite silly. I think we all like the idea of real life pranks and jokes and making comedy out of things that would happen.” This comes out of the writing process, a true collaboration that Tom praises, “It came out of our shared interests as a group. It’s been so much more fun and productive than I would ever have imagined eight people working to together. It’s been really fun.”

Unlike much of the comedy scene throughout term, the Spring Revue is a mainshow. As a result, the usual late-night audience of majorly inebriated students will be seceded by a more sober audience of many non-students. Those involved see this show as a great and rare opportunity to put sketch comedy in the spotlight. They both agree that allowing the show to grow and develop has been fantastic, and that the merits of having the stage to themselves means they won’t have to improvise around the leftovers of another show’s set design, as often happens at smokers.

I ask what they can tell us about any sketch in particular but quickly realise the grasping inadequacy of this line of questioning, and begin to doubt the entire premise of this Revue Preview. A preview. Of a sketch show. Without giving away the punchlines. Or the sketches. Thankfully Tom is able to give a tantalising taste of one of the sketches: “It’s about two characters. There’s a classic twist. It comes about a minute before the end. I don’t even know what it’s about! You’ll find out. Come to the show to find out.” Look out for this one, you’ll know it when you see it.

For all the silliness and understandable vagueness, Ellen and Tom are sure to put much emphasis on what really should be the most important thing about the show: “Funny. I think that’s it, that’s what we wanted. To try and make people laugh as much as we could”, says Ellen. Tom sums this up elegantly: “It’ll be really high energy and a lot of work has gone into it. There’s always a great energy in that auditorium for the Spring Revue and we hope to ride that, maintain it and make it flourish.”

If there's energy in the Spring Revue auditorium, however, it's because these Footlights are bringing it. The sheer exuberance of Tom and Ellen as they talk about that single and venerable goal of making their show hilarious can only mean good things for their audience’s grinning muscles come next week. With that, I walk out into the bright streets of Cambridge with one conclusion: the only thing to do is see it for yourselves.