Review: Law Revue 2022 — Don’t be a 🔲
The Law Revue cast was incredibly strong with each performer bringing an enthusiasm and vigour to each of their roles
Image: Law Revue 2022.
As the perennial witness in my high school days of Mock Trial, I like to think of myself as an honorary member of the law community — I get it. The litigation, the accusations, the whole shebang. So I was very excited to see Law Revue this year. Returning to the stage after three years of plague-related interruptions, Law Revue: ‘Pulp Jurisdiction’ reappears in the York Theatre in a non-stop barrage of well written, hilarious, and decidedly brilliant sketch comedy.
Particular highlights of the show include Joseph Singer's delightfully villainous performance as Dr Evil, who overshares in a work interview. Dani Stephenson shone as Dora the Explorer in a trial against Swiper who earnestly asked the audience if Swiper should receive the maximum possible sentence (burning in the electric chair). A uniquely fun moment that took advantage of an already excited crowd. Another standout moment had to be Ella McCrindle’s unhinged rant about the disastrous consequences of the hit Netflix show ‘Is it cake?’ Du Toit Bredenkamp also heel kicked their way into stardom, playing a fantastically camp Putin in pink as an ‘Imperialist girl’ sung to the tune of Madonna’s ‘Material Girl’ and also broke the audience's hearts as a star-crossed patch of black mould. All around the Law Revue cast was incredibly strong with each performer bringing an enthusiasm and vigour to each of their roles that rarely left a break for me to catch my breath.
The show was also not afraid to take full advantage of its technical aspects. The projection screen was used to its full potential: providing context for political references, subtitling songs, and even proffering jokes of its own. The AV sketches were particularly compelling as well. Standouts were the hilariously degenerate recreation of Patrick Bateman's routine in American Psycho in ‘St Paul’s Psycho’ and Prudence Wilkins-Wheat and Ella McCrindle in ‘Should we montage?’ Full credit to AV director Julia Saab for the excellent execution of these films.
If something had to be faulted, the staging was something that I didn’t much care for. At certain intervals the stage would be partitioned into three sections (stage left, centre, and right) where sketches in batches of three would cycle from left to right, with actors hanging in an awkward stasis both before and after their sketch was completed. Some sketches also seemed to flounder for a solid punchline, leaving an awkward pause for audiences to realise that the sketch was over before the automaton actors powered off as the next sketch started.
This structure is apparently typical of Law Revue, its intention being to save time between sketches. The format however felt like it had more of a suffocating effect on some of the sketches than a freeing one as performances would become quite statically confined to their own partition. Why book the York theatre if only to use a third of it at time? By the time the second act rolled around I had become a bit fatigued of the ‘2-3 people in chairs that face the audience sketch’ genre. One moment where this most stood out was in the Dr Evil sketch which ended in a beautiful moment of the band and the actors performing together. A moment that felt so freeing, and yet so fleeting, that it only reinforced how static the sketches felt going forward.
However, this is not to say that Law Revue was not able to take full advantage of the York theatre. My favourite moment of the show had to be the closing number for the show’s first act, in which five particularly litigious celebrities Peter Dutton (Beau Glass), John Barilaro (Kiran Gupta), Ben Roberts-Smith (Lauren Lancaster), Christian Porter (Anna Simpson), and Johnny Depp (Ariana Haghighi) parodied Backstreet Boys’ ‘I Want It That Way’ about their penchant for suing. Following which, the rest of the cast subsequently swarmed the stage dressed in the iconic boy band outfit of a plain white-shirt, double denim, and a backwards baseball cap. All of this was greatly accentuated by the fantastically creative choreography of Ellie Zheng and Maddie Scott — as the cast danced exactly like those kitschy teenage heartthrobs — as well as the Singing Director Kiran Gupta whose vocals were felt in each catchy tune that the cast sang for us.
One peculiar nitpick I noticed was that the performers seemed unable or unwilling to take off any of their props with them, usually leaving it for the crew to do when it would have been much faster for them to take it off anyway. Perhaps these were billable hours for the crew, admirably led by Crew Manager Christina Shin, Ashmita Senthilataban and Stage Manager Veronica Lenard.
Lastly, directed by Emily Scarlis and Danielle Tweedale, the band was absolutely flawless and their only crime was that they were not more present in the show. With mashups of songs like ‘Canon in D major’ into an exuberant rendition of The Office theme, and a particularly catchy version of the Black Eyed Peas’ ‘Pump it’ with Andy Park on guitar as the opening number, the band’s music kept the energy and pace of the show pumping along with a energy that only a live band can provide.
Ultimately, Law Revue was both guilty and innocent, charged and acquitted, and two more opposed things. Alongside Producers Maddi Scott and Dani Stephenson and Assistant Directors Elizabeth Nutting, Prudence Wilkins-Wheat, Una Altarac, and Ella McCrindle, Directors Genevieve Couvret and Coco Frohlich have prepared an excellent show across what has been a trying three years. While some decisions were baffling to me, I would absolutely 100% recommend that you go and see Law Revue this year as a stellar return to form for the revue scene.