Donors is a sketch show.  And, luckily, sketch shows are what the Footlights do best.  There is some faffing around at the beginning and end and at odd points throughout, where there are attempts to stitch the sketches together into a ‘play’.  The urge for connectedness has become a Footlights trend, but after the miserable mess of last year’s Spring Revue this writing team came very close to abandoning the idea.  If they had been one step bolder and ditched it completely, they would have written a five star sketch show.  As it is, the search for play-like continuity means Donors is a five star sketch show with a dull beginning and a pathetically limp ending.

Jack Gamble takes a while to warm up as the doctor but is much better elsewhere.  His talent for stylised roles is perfect for establishing character instantly at the beginning of sketches.  Characterisation was consistently and impressively strong, with Jess Peet’s old lady particularly outstanding.  However, the star man is Lowell Belfield, whose brand of halting and awkward comic acting is one of the funniest I’ve seen.  His partnership with Ryan O’Sullivan brings the best out of them both.  Close runner-up is Saul Boyer, whose capacity for arrogance surely makes him odds-on to be the villain in next year’s pantomime.

Such an excellent cast would count for nothing, however, if they were not performing well-written sketches.  Witty and silly, surreal and naturalistic, developed and punchy, the styles are varied but the humour is always there.  Collaboration means we will never know where the real writing and directing talent lies amongst Jon Bailey, Matty Brady and Matilda Wnek – whoever has it, you know who you are, and well done to you.

But the final touch of daring escaped the writers, causing them to tack on a slow beginning and an impossibly poor ending that was limp, nonsensical and unfunny.  A miserly man would have deducted a star for each, but that would do a great injustice to the overall quality of this revue.  The Footlights deserve their reputation as the leading student comedy troupe in the country, because they are incredibly funny – they should not feel the need to dress up their brilliance as a ‘play’.  Turn up five minutes late, ignore the ending and the distracting attempts to stitch it all together, and what you have left is a five star sketch show.