This is by no means Wang or Lennard’s first time at the rodeo, and last night it showed. These Footlights old-timers, both of whom are already earning their stripes on the comedy circuit, made a visit to the ADC to remind us that they’ve still got it.

Phil Wang opened the proceedings with his usual easy stage presence, though perhaps pitched energy levels too low even for Week 0. While understandably at ease with a home crowd, Wang’s tone occasionally veered too far towards the conversational. At times, it was hard not to feel that Wang didn’t think this was the real deal. Fair enough: everyone knew that the purpose of this show was for material-in-progress to be tested and fine-tuned for bigger, better shows. What slightly threw the audience was when Wang said as much. The show certainly wasn’t as well-oiled as you’d expect from professional comics, though the pair’s paper-shuffling, watch-checking haphazardness was itself part of their charm.

Generally, the evening followed an upward trajectory. While capitalising on race is usually a pretty tired comic tactic, Wang managed to get considerable mileage out of it. Clever callbacks combined with characteristic fastidiousness and self-deprecation made for a pretty much steady stream of laughter, with Wang only momentarily losing his audience when a joke became too technical or overlong. Wang’s pièce de résistance, however, was his read-through of an imagined Guardian Magazine ‘Interview with Phil Wang’. This Wang reeled off with brilliant severity and deft comic timing, nailing the satire and narrowly managing not to outstay its welcome.

Next, following some awkward apologising from Wang, came Jonny Lennard. Though otherwise a similarly assured stage presence, Lennard’s one slightly distracting habit was his at first imperceptible, then increasingly conspicuous and mildly off-putting microphone humping. His deadpan, pitch-black comedy, however, provided a perfect counterweight to the gentler, more jovial Wang, though they shared a love of storytelling. Under the pretence of being a children’s book author, Lennard read a selection of moralising fables, each increasingly improbable until we were having full-blown sex in Halfords. Yet Lennard carried the ridiculousness of his tales with a straight-faced severity that insisted to the audience that it was storytime, even allowing them to choose the ending of a story about drug abuse. Naturally, it ended in tears.

These two comics’ natural talent doesn’t need much window-dressing, but it could have done with a little more. On occasion, the brutal honesty with which Wang and Lennard addressed the audience (‘sorry if you’ve heard this one before’, ‘I’m trying this out for a show’) veered towards the unprofessional, the performers too confident of having already won our unconditional love. That said, if they can be pretty darn hilarious without even trying, I predict great things for the shows for which last night was a warm-up.