Durham Revue: ...And Other Stories

Watching student comedy at the Fringe can be a risky business – you never know what you’re going to get. Some of the greatest British actors and comics have come up through university troupes, although not since inaugural Perrier Award winners, the Cambridge Footlights, consisted of Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie and Emma Thompson has so much talent been so heavily concentrated. One need only consider a certain breakthrough act from this year’s festival—who, in the interests of discretion, will remain the Penny Dreadfuls—to see how that tradition has endured.

That sort of quality is not guaranteed; and so we arrive at the Durham Revue.
It would be unfair to say they aren’t funny, but certain segments do seem to draw on a rather juvenile sense of humour. The actors themselves clearly think their material was hilarious, because they can’t have cut very much out of the first scripting: the show is crammed so full that anything short of the often incomprehensibly quick delivery would overrun the alotted time. They’d do better to drop a few segments.

The show seems to suffer from either too much rehearsing, or too little. While the performers are comfortable enough with their lines to shoot them out like gunfire, ensemble acting is something they need to brush up on, particularly the chapters on comic timing, and not talking over one another.

There are a few gems but too few to cover up the fact that this troupe are essentially playing to themselves rather than the audience.