Cambridge comedy across 100 years

Press, 10 August 1985, Page 20

Cambridge comedy across 100 years

Footlights! A Hundred Years ot Cambridge Comedy. By Robert Hewison. Methuen, 1984. 224 pp. $20.95.

(Reviewed by

A. K. Grant)

This attractively produced and copiously illustrated book covers the history of the world’s most famous revue club, Cambridge’s Footlights Dramatic Club, from 1883 to 1983. Wisely, Mr Hewison allots 100 or so pages to the club’s first 70 years, and his second 100-odd pages to the last 30 years, during which time the club’s revues have featured such soon-to-be stalwarts of British comedy as Jonathan Miller, Peter Cook, Eleanor Bron, David Frost, Eric Idle, Graham Chapman, Tim Brooke-Taylor, Bill Oddie, and Germaine Greer. Mr Hewison deals with his subject in a comprehensive and scholarly way, though his style is perhaps not quite spritely enough to suit its subject. Having never taken part in a Footlights revue, I would neverthless assume that despite the glittering

parade of famous names, the average Footlights revue is put together quite as shambolically as the now defunct Canterbury University revues of blessed memory. Certainly the only Footlights revue I saw in Cambridge itself, “This Way Out,” in 1966, starring Germaine Greer, seemed not much better or worse in terms of material or production than some of the stuff that was done here in the early sixties. (I exempt from this observation the immortal “Cambridge Circus” of 1964, which toured here, and was beyond praise.) So, to treat the Footlights as though it was an important institution with a sober and coherent history is a bit like crushing a butterfly upon the Wheel of Life. But for all that the book will be enjoyable reading for anyone who has ever taken part in a revue, as a reminder of the occasional heights which the form can achieve. For me, the best thing in the book was a reproduction of a programme from the 1978 revue. The back of the programme lists quotes from London critics about some of the great comedians and writers who have contributed their talents to the club. Thus a Mr Harold Conway of the “Daily Sketch” said of the 1955 revue (with Jonathan Miller): “What has

happened to the Footlights who once fed new ideas and new style to the West End stage ... Jonathan Miller wants to be a chemist, not a theatrical cult. I back his judgment.” Thus the "Manchester Guardian’s” critic on the 1957 revue, written entirely by Michael Frayn and John Edwards: “The script writers do not include perceptive satirists of contemporary affairs.” Thus a Mr Don Chapman of the “Oxford Mail” on the 1962 revue: “Worst of all, not so much sick as sadistic, are the work of John Cleese and Graham Chapman, who are responsible for a lot of the poorer material.” Thus, to end the litany, with the magisterial Bernard Levin on the great “Cambridge Circus” of 1963, starring John Cleese, Tim Brooke-Taylor and Bill Oddie: “Have they got a new Jonathan Miller among them? I may as well get the answer over with right away. No.” What this proves is not that newspaper critics are always wrong about comedy; merely that they are often wrong about anything new and original. Then, once they have accepted the new and original, they use it as a stick with which to beat something else new and original.