one4review | On 08, Aug 2025

Dating back over a century, the Cambridge Footlights has a list of alumni that reads like a Who’s Who of British comedy talent ranging from Monty Python to the Inbetweeners. Because of its illustrious pedigree, the annual Fringe outing for the famous repertory company is always hotly anticipated by crowds eager to spot the next Stephen Fry or John Oliver, Sue Perkins or Phil Wang.

With that in mind, it is inevitable that a sketch show written and performed by current students might struggle to meet such high and exacting expectations. And struggle it does.

There seems to have been some insecurity in the show from the offing. According to the flyers the subtitle for the show is “Fragile Contents” and is “a show about falling apart”. Which… well, is one way to describe it. I notice that the show has opted out of online reviews on the Fringe website and there’s no wonder why.

I’m sorry to say that this year’s production is simply a bad show. The quality of the writing is low, even for first-time sketch writers, with overwritten dialogue, obvious punchlines or worse, no punchline at all. The one sketch with an actually funny premise – involving someone calling for an ambulance but having to work out the address of the Trappist monastery they’re in via charades – was inexplicably cut short just as the audience perked up to switch to a different, noticeably worse, punchline.

I don’t want to focus too much on the performers, but if there are any future panel-show regulars amongst them it will be only due to the lessons learned from the aftermath of this show, not due to any visiting agents sitting enraptured in the audience. Every single delivery was stilted and felt under-rehearsed. The show overall gave the impression of a school nativity play with actors nervously awaiting to announce there was no room at the inn. It’s an unusual show when I think the best performance on display was done by the tech who had more sense of comic timing than anyone on stage.

I was not the only audience member bouncing off the material. If the stoney silence permeated by only the most generous of titters hadn’t given that away, the haemorrhaging audience sneaking out under cover of the blackouts (which served to end sketches when no punchline could be found) would have let you know. What had been a sold out crowd dwindled to the point that several rows were empty at the end and the couple behind me had a loud whispered discussion about leaving which only ended because they felt too close to the stage to do it unobtrusively.

I feel bad pointing this out because, at the end of the day, the Fringe should be a place for slightly ropey student-led shenanigans exactly like this. It should be the Petry dish to grow the mould of success. But this isn’t a pay-what-you-want show by some plucky provincial university’s comedy society in the backroom of a pub. This is taking place in the largest room at the Pleasance Dome and is – I kid you not – the second most expensive show of my Fringe so far at a whopping (by Fringe standards) £17 a ticket. There are internationally renowned headliners in theatres twice the size of this, charging less.

It is certainly not the fault of the performers and writers that, due to the Footlight’s reputation, people are willing to pay through the nose to be able to get the chance to say they were at the first performance of the Next Big Thing. But if you are going to charge five star prices, you have to be held to five star standards and if you earn as professionals, you cannot be given the leeway of the inherently amateur level of the production as a whole.

Unfortunately, this is a bad show. Not offensive, perhaps, but that’s the highest praise I can muster for it.

*

Reviewed by Tom

Pleasance Dome – King Dome

16.50 (1hr)

Until 25 Aug (not 12 or 20)