Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Volume. 34, Number 1. 1971
Drama
Drama
It's not all that easy to recall in February a revue seen in December but enough remains freshly in my mind to make a start. I recall first its verve and spirit and ruthless punches both to the left and right. I noted a letter to The Dominion replying to a toffee-nosed critic of the revue, that probably never before at Victoria University has "freezing worker" been rhymed with "shirker" to sustained and spontaneous applause. But don't judge from this that the swings and the lunges went only leftwards; Roger Hall (M.A. Hons.) and Dave Smith (LIB.) sprayed their rapid fire in a wide are which included left, right, and centre.
The Christmas revue has by now replaced Extrav as the University's main assault on the Establishment and the hoisting of sacred cows. No longer is Extrav in the Opera House, an annual junket of witty and partly witty large-scale productions with clownish interval shows and dreadful loping chorus lines. No longer is the male ballet a show-stopper; in fact it has disappeared. The last Extrav I saw (1969) had a good orchestra and an appalling script, and was duly trounced in Salient by Dave Smith.
No-one better to administer the coup de grace to a dying form, since he has been largely responsible for its supercession by the Christmas Revue. It was started some eight years ago by Bill Sheat, who claims authorship of the final chorus, still retained, and since then, every new edition has supassed its predecessor. I thought the 1969 revue a high water-mark, in particular for its mordant "We don't like Samoans" to "Yes we have no bananas," the hit tune of the "Brown and White Minstrel Show" as Dave called it, but the water-mark crept a cubit higher for the 1970 revue. As an old revue hack myself, I must express my admiration for two fertile imaginations which can eviscerate whole works like the Marat-Sade and Oh, What a Lovely War! and make superbly witty and sustained holiday pieces of both of them. Some of my pleasure came no doubt from knowing both works intimately, and this is the cautionary area of esoterica: the better you know the originals the greater your shock of recognition. So let me say that I applauded Consumer/Muldoon with deep respect, and fell out of my aisle seat for Oh, What a Lovely Boer which seemed to me the pinnacle of the 1970 show.
But there were other pleasures. Steve Robinson's elegant interludes, for his clear voice and tactful guitar; Helene Wong (B.A.) for her continuous high spirits and the anguished cry of "Fluck!" when parodying the Japanese lady on television who conducts food seminars; the whole cast for the Golden Needle Award for Prick of the Year, in particular the lady who sighed for hard-core porn, and Gil Janson (B.A.)'s masterpiece of travestie as Carmen, Dave Smith for the wit of Parting shot, which showed that his talent extends to the crisp as well as to the extended piece, to an orchestra who had done its homework sufficiently to reproduce the exact sounds of the Marat-Sade and Lovely War music.
The standard was maintained almost throughout, except for "This is your Life", a squib which damply fizzed, apart from the stunning moment of the water turning into wine, hope it will be cut for Orienation Week. The Pope seemed to me to get what his Pacific tour merited. The dance sequence (Liz Jones, B.A. Hons.) was clear and shapely and though not pyrotechnical, cleanly executed and most pleasurable. All in all, a fine evening's work. Freshers should enjoy its return season and older hands who missed it in December should barter a loved one for seats.