NewsRevue 2014


Canal Cafe Theatre, Emma Taylor
Pleasance Courtyard

NewsRevue 2014

As always, Fringe favourite Newsrevue brings the best of its satirical songs, sketches and one-liners from the past year of the world's longest-running live comedy show at the Canal Café Theatre in London to Edinburgh.

But, while some of the news stories are up to a year old, some are bang up-to-date—the story about Cliff Richard's home being searched came out during the Edinburgh run but it still got a couple of mentions.

The songs are all well-known tunes with new lyrics, opening with a medley from Cabaret all about 'phone hacking, with a special appearance from Angela Merkel singing "Mein Herr". The finale is the act one close of Les Misérables about the Scottish referendum re-titled "One Month More", interspersed with a few well-known Scottish tunes.

The best title—I don't think I'm spoiling too much as there is much more to the song—has got to be "24 Romanians Living Next Door to Farage".

Well-known figures have their own quirks across different sketches, so Ed Milliband is indecisive, Nick Clegg is like a little kid wanting David Cameron to come out and play and Boris Johnson is completely incomprehensible.

The show touches on all of the subjects you would expect and some you may not, including the Cabinet reshuffle, selfies, Rebecca Brooks, UKIP, the "Bedroom Tax", Rolf Harris and much more.

The whole thing is performed at an exhausting pace by a very talented cast of comic actor-singers: Mimi Edwards, Matt Lee-Steer, Alice Marshall and Will Mulvey, accompanied throughout by onstage musical director Michael Riley.

It's impressive, often funny, sometimes cringeworthy (which is which depends largely on your opinion and taste) and always worth seeing, if not easily offended.

Reviewer: David Chadderton

*Some links, including Amazon, Stageplays.com, Bookshop.org, ATG Tickets, LOVEtheatre, BTG Tickets, Ticketmaster, The Ticket Factory, LW Theatres and QuayTickets, are affiliate links for which BTG may earn a small fee at no extra cost to the purchaser.

Are you sure?