Cambridge theatre is full of originality.  Directors tend to see student theatre as a place to be daring, and rightly so.  But it is original writing that makes Cambridge so unique.  New writing is widely in evidence this term, especially at the Corpus Playrooms.  This is definitely to be encouraged, so long as the airing of new writing is justified on merit, and is not just over-indulgence on the part of play selection committees.  Whether the purpose of student theatre is to experiment or to entertain is a choice that hopefully has not been made in selection processes.

What Cambridge theatre is most famous for, however, is the originality of its comedy.  An immense amount of comedy is performed in Cambridge: to take the ADC’s Lent programme as the flagship of Cambridge theatre, five productions are categorised under the ‘light blue’ of comedy, plus smokers.  What’s more, every single one is new writing.

This analysis certainly poses methodological questions, the most significant being that the self-proclaimed farce, An Italian Straw Hat is categorised as a drama.  I also realise that a good number, if not the majority, of full length dramas have comic moments, some outright hilarious, others darkly funny.  But these issues aside, checking the descriptions more closely reveals that while the content of Cambridge comedy may be original, the form is not – sketch shows have a monopoly on the Cambridge theatre scene.

The quality of Cambridge’s comic writing is not in question; if anything, it is all too often taken for granted.  But could theatre-goers ask for more variety in the context of so much originality?  Even when productions are play length, the recent trend has been to write sketch shows, which are then intrusively and clunkily pasted together into some excuse of a narrative.

That is why I applaud the attempt by An Italian Straw Hat to bring farce back to Cambridge.  Farce has been almost entirely unchartered territory in my time here, with Noises Off the only salient example – and that play’s development of physical slapstick to the extreme makes it a genre unto itself.  The ‘village hall’ style of classic farces would suit some of Cambridge’s smaller venues and would have to merit serious consideration from selection committees.

Yet it is not only the format, but also the universal originality of Cambridge comedy that can be questioned.  It is possible to be original with a script as well as when writing one, and this deserves recognition.  I would like to see some of the big Footlights names test themselves in a classic comic play.  Such is the blinkered focus on originally-written comedy that when something like The Importance of Being Earnest is produced in Cambridge – as it was twice last term – it is by college, not university, drama societies.

Directors should probably not look quite as far back as Bartholomew Fair, which was a brave attempt, but a stretch too far.  Unlike jokes, the old ones are not necessarily the best ones; but it might be good to see some of the old ones given more of a chance.