The annual Footlights and Friends is always a sell-out spectacle, promising a comedy feast of Dionysian proportions, a colorful carousing of other universities’ freshest talent, alongside our own stalwart Footlights. But this feast, whilst belly-filling, was far from belly-achingly good. Moments of brilliance were offset by technical blunders, ballistic dialogue splintered one-liners, timing tipped off kilter; yet this was a show of convivial competition, one which, quite rightly, ruffled the peacock assurance of our home team.

Two particular skits deserve special mention. Jason Forbes’ and Lowell Belfield’s ‘crack den’ scene was pure comic genius: the punctilious Forbes fronting a self-defeating façade of a bakery against the wry, adoringly lanky Belfield. The duo had their audience in stitches, setting the bar deceptively high, perhaps. So did the spoof-balletic ‘dream catcher’ sequence by the Leeds Tealights, based on the more simple, masterfully realized premise of a lout with a net prancing, ninja-style, about the stage, head locking bad dreams. Whereas the Bristol Revunions plumbed the visual laughs a little too much, Leeds got it just right.

Though certain lighting hitches derailed their set, the Footlights were, on the whole, of a very high standard, producing the most surrealist, well-written work of the night. Forbes shone throughout, with his saturnine delivery, as did the manic Potts with his convulsive stage-laughs; Ahir Shah’s turn as the bigoted, parturient-explicit father equally impressed, though a little too labored. Yet the Leeds Tealights gave as good as they watched, bounding on stage with a raw, frenetic energy; whereas our Lighters scrapped topically in modern grit – ‘mortgage’ boys, masturbation - their Leeds counterparts kept it above-board, with a delightfully composed scene on a hot water bottle, and Harry Perryment’s ‘Joycey’ skit proving a rambling tour de force.

It was the Bristol Revunions, however, who lagged considerably behind. Certain flickers of Fellini flare – such as the bread flutes – were muffled beneath lengthy, end-weighted sketches with creeping strains of interpretive dance. More like a bad trip than stellar comedy. The hastily appended Haiku joke was brilliant, but lost in laughter, the ‘dictator snail’ almost succeeded but felt a little too similar to the bewildering octogenarian skit.  Whereas Cambridge and Leeds comprised fine actors, not merely comics, Bristol failed to emulate such sinewy characterization, resorting to a more trifling play of surfaces.

The night might have lurched forward awkwardly, charting certain highs and certain, dismal lows. But as an ensemble piece, it was a resounding success – a testament to the unanimous potency of comedy, the anima of laughter itself. For such a cross-field showcase, perhaps it was right that our Footlights didn’t have the gilded edge: they shone brightly, but not blindingly.