Revue - Contemporary Revues

Contemporary Revues

Revues are often common today as student entertainment (such as The University of Canterbury Law Revue, University of Otago Capping Show, Cambridge Footlights, Durham Revue, The Leeds Tealights, The Oxford Revue, St George's Medics Revue, Sheffield Medics Revue, The Edinburgh Revue, Bristol Revunions, The Wrekin Revue, Medleys, University of Sydney Revues, The Australian National University Law and Arts Revues, University of New South Wales Revues, The Ashbourne College Revue, Rave Revue and the University of Queensland Law and Med Revues). These use pastiche, in which contemporary songs are re-written in order to comment on the college or courses in a humorous nature. While most comic songs will only be heard within the revue they were written for, sometimes they become more widely known, such as A Transport of Delight about the big red London bus by Flanders and Swann, who first made their name in a revue titled At the Drop of a Hat.

The Rolling Thunder Revue was a famed U.S. concert tour in the mid-1970s consisting of a traveling caravan of musicians, headed by Bob Dylan, that took place in late 1975 and early 1976.

Towards the end of the 20th century, a sub-genre of revue largely dispensed with the sketches, founding narrative structure within a song cycle in which the material is culled from varied works. This type of revue may or may not have identifiable characters and a rudimentary story line but, even when it does, the songs remain the focus of the show (for example, Closer Than Ever by Richard Maltby, Jr. and David Shire). This type of revue usually showcases songs written by a particular composer or songs made famous by a particular performer. Examples of the former are Side By Side By Sondheim (music/lyrics Stephen Sondheim), Eubie! (Eubie Blake) Tom Foolery (Tom Lehrer), and Five Guys Named Moe (songs made popular by Louis Jordan). The eponymous nature of these later revues suggest a continued embrace of a unifying authorial presence in this seemingly scattershot genre, much as was earlier the case with Ziegfeld, Carrol, et al.