Ironically for performers primarily marketed as a troupe, the Footlights actually proved far more funny as individuals. Maybe it was the unchanging white background, perhaps just the visual uniformity of an all-male cast in white t-shirts and washed out jeans – but the frequent group scenes which should have been their forte simply didn’t do enough to grab the audience’s attention and keep it. 

Some entertaining ideas, like the boy-band sketches, with terminally awkward Ben Pope as the manager, ultimately lacked flair in their execution, with half the cast ending up reduced to the role of thumb-twiddling bystanders. Many fantastic sketches, like the dexterous good-cop bad-cop mimicking exercise by Pope and MacKeith, did manage to build up tension and capitalise on the Footlights inclination for dark humour, but the overall comedic impact of the entire first half was dulled by its pace.

The second half was distinctly more enjoyable, marked by a gradual crescendo of applause. It was no coincidence that this was where the Footlights were given some breathing space as individual performers, or as pairs – Alex MacKeith hilariously whimsical in his guitar-plucked ode to Australia, whilst Ryan Ammar and James Bloor bounced off each other brilliantly in their fortune cookie making lesson, the former as a docile TV chef and the latter as a twisted, tortured devil figure coming up with the ridiculously banal fortune messages. Bloor displayed an astonishing capacity to twitch and turn for comedic effect, especially in a hilarious Hollywood stunt double gag.

Unfortunately, the sketches were consistently let down by their punch lines – just as the audience was coaxed into some solid chuckling, we were tossed back down again with childish gags that did away with any built-up subtlety. It was as though the performers were uncertain as to what to do with the laughs, or even how to manage the transitions between acts. I struggled to find a sketch that kept up its pace until the very end – a great one featuring a murder mystery and a group of insane prisoners plummeted with a simple “I did it”.

The show as a whole was based on brilliant ideas that manage to delve deep into the recesses of the absurd, with close enough juxtaposition to real life to make the effect unsettlingly funny. The Footlights are neither particularly political nor particularly niche – instead it’s the consistent strand of nonsensicality in their humour that works well, drawing the audience in to intriguing alternate universes – sometimes quite literally, in the case of ‘alternate universe tennis’ where they play back and forth into the juliettes. Part of the comedy also lies in the satisfied giggles the performers exchange, their eye-contact and moments of improvisation, all closely tuned in their wacky sense of humour.  

The problem is that this sense of humour can occasionally be alien and follows a pace not always suited to an excitable evening crowd. This year’s Footlights are talented – that much is a given. But they need to put the focus on what they are truly good at, and draw in their audience from the very beginning.