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What's On Stage - 25 July 2001
Mark Rylance recently commented in an Evening Standard interview that actors
were inherently stupid, citing their conversations about politics as proof.
The men next to me in a steamy midsummer night’s canal café said he’d heard
that theatre folk were generally a nice lot. Yes warned his girlfriend but they
can be bitchy. Somewhere in all that lies the essence of the brilliant Newsrevue.
For the past twenty-one years an ever-changing group of writers,
directors and performers have met to pull together a topical cabaret for the
following weekend. Some of the most talented artists I’ve ever worked with have
cut their teeth on this tiny stage in Little Venice. It requires Herculean levels
of talent and stamina to make it work and this twenty-first anniversary production,
previewing before Edinburgh REALLY works.
It’s a tatty looking affair, four plastic garden chairs in
front of a stained old curtain and yet the performances and writing are so spot
on it’s far funnier and sharper then anything you can currently see on TV.
Anne Robinson is ruthlessly sent up in a pastiche of Here’s to you Mrs Robinson,
world leaders take a turn in the Mastermind chair, John Major and William Hague
reinterpret you were always on my mind as I was always undermined, Barry George,
Jill Dando’s murderer, finally gets his chance to be Freddie Mercury when his
trial is restaged as a version of Bohemian Rhapsody, there’s heartfelt musical
lament for BSE Take a look at me cow and a glorious micky take of Essex girl
Denise Van Outen in Chicago. Individual writers aren’t credited but there are
sharper lyrics here then anything you’ll find in modern West End musicals.
The versatile female performers Emma Thornett & Laura
Donaghey take on everyone from the queen to John Prescott, handsome Sean McCann
is a wonderful mimic and Stuart Piper is quite simply a major star in waiting.
Overheard on the way out - 1st American girl: Some
of that when right over my head. 2nd: You have to remember we’re
not from here and we’re also not very bright. Excellent!"
PHILIP CHAPMAN, July 2001
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