The Newsrevue Story

NewsRevue had by now settled on a format, and a regular working routine. The show is up-dated by between 20% to 40% each week, and this strikes a reasonable balance between keeping the material up to date and allowing adequate time to rehearse the new stuff. The cast and director change every six weeks. The writers meet on Thursday evenings and submit material by 12pm on Tuesdays for inclusion in that week's show. The cast and director then read through the stuff on Tuesdays, choose and arrange what will be done, rehearse it on Wednesday and Thursday and perform it Thursday night.

In 1981 in Edinburgh, NewsRevue played the 650-seat auditorium in the Assembly Rooms, and was a Perrier Award Finalist. Back in London the show continued to grow in strength at the Gate, and was persuaded in April 1982 to try a run at the Fortune Theatre in the West End. It was a disaster, and closed after two weeks. For a while it looked as though the Fortune would be the demise of NewsRevue, and it wasn't presented in Edinburgh that year, the only time it has missed in the last twenty years.

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