Four students, a full house and a series of clever sketches make for a very enjoyable hour in
Any laughter that is lost in one sketch is quickly recovered in the next.
There's a Prime Minister going to war with ‘the enemy’ by sending a message in Morse code; philosophical children on the playground; football commentators at the Christmas Day truce in the trenches of World War One; an incredibly embarrassing job interview.
Alternating between working in pairs and as a group, the Revue prove incredibly versatile, changing from elderly people in a retirement home to small children with ease, with the strangely mature attitudes of the latter adding to the humour of that particular sketch.
This versatility, however, is not so evident in the length of the sketches; only a few are based on a brief one-liner or twist at the end, such as the wedding sketch, and most last for longer, which sometimes causes the pace of the performance to slow as the inevitable twist or conclusion is reached.
I found that the Deal or No Deal parody in particular is somewhat overlong, but the sketch that follows – domestic tasks being addressed as political issues – more than makes up for this. This being said, unlike many sketch comedy shows, I found the majority of the sketches to be strong, with only one or two weak links, and any laughter that is lost in one sketch is quickly recovered in the next.
There's one sketch in particular in which one member of the revue acted as an auctioneer, with the others acting as bidders; what they are bidding on are emotions. Surprise, excitement, greed, a hilarious contrast between anger and patience: these and more were auctioned off. The conclusion they came to? You can’t buy love.
