Show Rating:

Launched in 1979, NewsRevue is London's longest-running current affairs sketch show and something of a Fringe institution.

Usually based in the capital's Canal Cafe Theatre, its premise is simple – a regularly changing cast of two men and two women take the important issues of the day and make them a bit, well, funnier.

Much of it is based on puns and caricature, so we see Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams lamenting his comments about sharia law to the tune of the West Side Story song Maria. Cher's Shoop Shoop Song (It's In His Kiss) is reimagined, in gloriously bad taste, as ‘She's In The Bed’, starring Shannon Matthews. The Sound of Music's sickly Von Trapp children become the Von Fritzls, in an all-singing, all-dancing spoof about incest and being held hostage underground.

It is slick and shameless and thunders on with the confidence of the truly

well-prepared. The cast can do a dour, stiff-jawed Gordon Brown as skillfully as the ubiquitous lairy Amy Winehouse impression (whose ‘Blakey’ is uncanny).

The only weakness is in the variable quality of the material. While, for the

main, sharp as sciatica (to steal from Dylan Thomas) it dips at times to rather lazy stereotype. The Prime Minister's Midsummer Night's Dream sketch is sublime, sending up knife crime in a Bee Gees medley where knife replaces the night in fever, less so.

Still, these are small matters in what is, overall, a witty and hugely impressive show.

Reviewed by: Nione Meakin