Not being laddish or female enough to have been to Newnham before, I could only hope that I was not leaving the city-centre and the hub of Cambridge theatre for comedy bandit country of poor puns and slapstick. However, Mexican Standoff need not have given me fright, as the familiar faces of ‘Outside Joke’ were thoroughly entertaining. Their ideas were original and their sketches did not repeat themselves once in the show’s entire duration. The witty and the silly were combined in perfect measure; scenes ranging from spoonerisms to the arduous life of Mr. Muscle. Occasionally, the end of the joke and the end of the scene did not coincide, so a couple of lines after the punchline did little more than usher the actors off the stage as the laughter died down. Otherwise, the pace was consistently sharp, and plenty was packed in to a highly amusing show.

‘Outside Joke’ is a gifted comic company, with actors of a range of styles complementing one another on stage and, no doubt, also in the writing process. Pierre Novellie is awfully talented at playing lunatics – his alcoholic mime being only the most memorable of a whole series of eccentric characters. His versatile facial expressions often raised a laugh before the sketch had even begun. Jonny Lennard is a natural performer, totally at ease and silkily smooth in front of an audience. He and his shock of hair are effortlessly funny, proving his comic ability in sketches to match the calibre of his stand-up routines. Ali Lewis was often the one holding sketch together in the straight role, but he was also brilliant as more quirky characters, ranging from a mother to a Muslim to a mosquito.

At the outposts of the Cambridge theatre scene, performances are understandably hard to polish, but the production did at times make things unnecessarily difficult. Props were minimal and set-changes speedy; but the accompanying series of lighting changes could have been much simpler, leaving the actors cloaked in darkness far too often. The stand-up background of the actors and their familiarity with microphones meant that the odd line was lost, although the acoustics of the hall did them no favours. The projector screen, on the other hand, was put to good use for some pre-recorded pieces that kept proceedings varied but just as funny.

Overall, the audience was brilliantly entertained; any faults are little more than nit-picking at what is an obviously accomplished and greatly enjoyable sketch show from some of the best in Cambridge.