2015-2022
'GOING VIRAL'
Pictured - Oxford's Westgate Centre, 2010s.
The final production by the Oxford Experimental Theatre Club, or E.T.C, came 81 years after the group's inception - Suddenly Last Summer by Tennessee Williams, performed on the 8th-11th February 2017 at the Oxford Playhouse. The reason for its subsequent silence is obscured by its lack of a digital footprint, but whatever the cause, the Oxford theatre scene had lost one of its most historically significant pillars, one that had revelled in the strange and forward-thinking.
"Suddenly Last Summer is transformed from an infamously one Act play to one divided by choreographed dance routines performed to emotionally hard-hitting live music. The stage itself is transformed into a space with many dimensions, as characters and musicians linger behind a semi-transparent screen acting as the window of the house. This adds the disturbing voyeurism of a play in which characters seem to dictate the truth as madness." - Shannon Rudden, The Oxford Student, 2017 [source]
As the ripples of the America Tour abated, the Oxford Revue settled back into its comfortable niche throughout the 2010s. Several scattered shows across Oxford each year led inevitably to one or more at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival - a theatrical calendar punctuated by collaborations with, among others, the Cambridge Footlights, Durham Revue and Bristol Revunions. These joint efforts were generally divided into segments, each participating troupe contributing a summary of their year's comedic output, almost always held in the university cities themselves.
Arguably the most prestigious (and near-cripplingly expensive) inter-university venture was that held in the Leicester Square Theatre at London's West End, on February 28th 2018. A show of sketches re-enacting famous film scenes acted as a fundraiser for the charity Rape Crisis, and involved the talents of the Revue, the Footlights and the UCL Graters - not to mention stand-up comedians Ivo Graham and Evelyn Mok.
"As is perhaps fitting for an event that celebrates student comedy, the show has a special student discount offer, involving return travel to and from Oxford, a 2 course meal in a swanky restaurant and a club night in the West End – all for the cost price of £25. It’s slightly ridiculous... If this wasn’t enough, with every ticket you buy, you are automatically entered into a draw to win tickets to smash musical Hamilton, and the additional interval raffle will include a whole host of signed merchandise from Revue alumni including Sally Phillips and Rowan Atkinson. All we can say is – break a leg." - Katie Sayer, The Oxford Student, 2018 [source]
Pictured - two Revue students reference the movie Titanic in a promotional video for the Revue's Leicester Square Funraiser.
The Revue did occasionally stray from its well-trod remit. The Burton-Taylor Studio, for instance, saw on February 10th 2015 a Revue stage adaptation of Danish experimental film The Boss of It All - the tale of an actor tasked with pretending to be the CEO of an IT firm, for the sake of ensuring a lucrative business deal.
The troupe's musical roots were also intermittently explored. Written for 2017's politically charged The Oxford Revue: Witch Hunt, 'Gay In The Water' acts as the anthem for Milosz, a Eurovision success story turned fascist European dictator, and a character never actually encountered throughout the duration of the Fringe play.
Pictured - 'cover' for Milosz's 'Gay In The Water'.
"Do we really need the gay fascist EU President Milosz, the central character who ties all the others together, but who we never quite manage to meet? And I wasn’t entirely convinced by the final minute effort to wrap the show up in the theme of witches... It felt a bit last ditch, as though the writers had suddenly realised that the connections between American evangelicalism, Glaswegian men’s right activism and children’s fiction aren’t all that obvious. But all it requires is it a bit of careful rejigging, because, at its heart, this sketch show knows exactly what it’s doing." - Susannah Goldsbrough, Cherwell, 2018 [source]
And so the course of the Oxford Revue's activities remained steady into 2020. The first two months of the year involved a markedly tireless schedule - collaborations with the Revue's Bristol, Cambridge, Durham and UCL counterparts, in performances of The Oxford Revue and Friends and Comedyfest 2020. The following pause in live performance necessitated by COVID-19 in March, while undoubtedly impactful across the entire theatre industry, would especially affect student productions - university life is a fleeting handful of years and, for many young people, the pandemic devoured what limited opportunities they had to perform within a relatively comfortable environment.
It did not, however, take too long for the Revue to adapt to the inhospitable circumstances. While skits intended only for online distribution had been performed and produced before, 2020 and 2021 saw this become a priority, a practice that gave both established Revue voices and newer talent (sometimes dubbed 'piglets', after the Revue's pig mascot Philip) somewhat equal platforms within the troupe. The Internet had indeed become a great equaliser, albeit within this specific remit.
The Revue's involvement with the Edinburgh Fringe would too be affected over the course of the pandemic. The Oxford Revue Kills God, Again was one of more than 260 shows [source] hosted on by the 2021 festival website - a series of sketches filmed on the 11th-12th June (under strict COVID restrictions) in the Burton-Taylor Studio, University Parks and Oxford Castle Mound.
Pictured - the cast of The Oxford Revue Kills God, Again. after the final punchline of the 'Knights' sketch.
It was not until 2022 when the Revue returned to the in-person Edinburgh Fringe with two separate productions - sketch show The People vs. The Oxford Revue and variety show The Oxford Revue and Other Farmyard Animals.
Pictured - the poster/leaflet design for The People vs. The Oxford Revue.
Having outlived its elder brother-in-arms The Experimental Theatre Club, the Oxford Revue travelled onwards into its seventieth year - as well as, perhaps, a mist of uncertainty. While a largely congenial routine had sustained its past decade, sketch comedy was still not as vogue or prominent of a theatrical art as it once had been. The troupe's attending audiences were also skewing older, and becoming more critical of the Revue's failure to replicate the successes of the marbled past they recalled.
"I know this is a slightly extreme critical reaction. But I saw The Oxford Revue and have been in hospital ever since. They say you should listen to your body... the sketches were clearly by Damien Hirst and Tracy Emin." - Twitter/X review of The Oxford Revue and Other Farmyard Animals, 2022
The risk lay, then, that even a Revue with a smaller profile could be under existential threat. If the E.T.C. could disappear so suddenly, could the Revue ultimately follow?
Pictured - the present logo for The Oxford Revue, established shortly after the 2022 Edinburgh Fringe.
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