Things move very quickly at the Fringe, and the action is thick and fast with shows coming and going all over the place. Of course, you do have some shows that return to the festival on a yearly basis, but I think that it may be a rather difficult job to find one that has a history as vast of News Revue.
Now in its 45th year, News Revue is a current affairs parody show that sees a cast of four, accompanied by a talented musician, play a multitude of well-known figures from the news in laugh out loud sketches and musical numbers.
Lewis Blomfield, Lani Calvert, Hannah Harquart and Conor Headley made up this year’s Edinburgh Fringe cast, playing roles such as Joe Biden, King Charles, Donald Trump, Rishi Sunak and Greta Thunberg to name but a few. Sketches included a look at a ring wing news channel calling everything ‘woke’, a pair of elderly Scottish women deciding to vote for Labour instead of the SNP, a pair of AI robots going on a date in place of their human owners and a play date between two world leaders, each of which had the audience in fits of giggles.
I believe that it is in the parody songs that this show really shines, with each song packed full of witty and clever lyrics and each song chosen to be instantly recognisable even with the changed-up words. In a delight for the musical theatre fans in the audience, the show opens with a Wicked inspired medley ‘No One Mourns The Tories’ and I particularly enjoyed the song about the fringe festival itself set to Come From Away’s ‘Welcome To The Rock’ which features joyful cries of ‘I am a Highlander’.
Other numbers included ‘Guess Who’s Back’ performed by Donald Trump, ‘You Kick Me Up’ rather than ‘You Raise Me Up’ performed by Euros 2024 football fans and a wonderfully silly cover of Barbie’s ‘I’m Just Ken’.
I can only imagine how much work goes into creating a show like this, as the cleverness of it relies of it being incredibly up to date. The news changes daily, and News Revue thrives on being that light-hearted silly escape from the reality of the news itself. It wants people to know instantly what story it is parodying and to be able to laugh at it, no matter how serious it may be on the regular news. I imagine that there is constant work going on behind the scenes to keep things as up to date as possible.
With the songs only be a few minutes long and the sketches often shorter, the hour whizzes by with the quick changes of character and costume as the cast pack as much as possible into the time. This allows the audience to laugh at every moment without anything lingering or feeling dragged out.
It's no surprise that News Revue continues to prove a hit year after year at the fringe. It’s always fresh and new, full of silliness and is guaranteed to have something that everyone will be able to laugh at.
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