Tuesday 30th October (4th week) @ Wheatsheaf, High Street
Doors 7.30 pm for 8.00 pm start
Guests: The Awkward Silence
£3 at door
Facebook event

Come see Oxford’s own sketch comedy troupe, the sticky homegrown chuckle strain that has budded off some of the world’s greatest comedians, like recent comedy-scene stealers Josie Long and Kieran & Joe; seasoned veterans Stewart Lee, Al Murray, and Armando Iannucci; plus some old, probably dead people like Rowan Atkinson, Michael Palin, and World War II-era newsreel hit, Frank The Slippery Pensioner.

After a long, hard, and arousing audition process, the Oxford Revue returns to the Wheatsheaf for its first show with a new cast of writers and performers. The programme: All-new sketches. A smattering of material from our Edinburgh Fringe show never performed in Oxford. A special guest slot from the very funny Awkward Silence. And with all this at a venue boasting free glass rental with the purchase of a drink, you’d be a fool not to come! A damned fool. You hear me? Now go on. Get.

We have now stopped scheduling auditions. Thanks to all who have auditioned; we will announce our new line-up soon.

AUDITIONS FOR NEW WRITERS & PERFORMERS, OCTOBER 2012

If you’re in Oxford for 2012-2013 and think you’ve got the comedy grapes to join the Revue, then it’s time to squeeze those comedy grapes into laff wine and pour it down our chuckle-parched gullets! We’re looking for new writer/performers to swell our ranks (and flanks) as our “retiring” members sail off on their joke-cracking ice floes. That’s right kids—mama and papa tee-hee are going on guffawliday and I can’t keep this up much longer but it’s time for a new generation to smash the sketch world in the face and bawls! —What? No don’t worry about what happens to them, the Oxford comedy muse is getting all achey and we need you to—no, it’s not a euphemism, the older members are just leaving. Stop asking questions we kill them and eat their brains and OK that’s enough, let’s move on.

Details will be posted by 1 October.

Featuring rare cameos by clasped-hand model Harry Long and the famous elbow of Pascoe Foxell.

Are you busy this Friday? You might not think so, but you are. Congratulations! Somebody in your life—somebody with whom you have forged a special relationship, but not necessarily the person you might expect—is at this very moment setting in motion an intricate plot to cause you to see the comedy show Return of the Oxford Revue.

It’s true! No matter how forcefully you ask, this mastermind will never let on that you are expected to purchase a ticket and attend these august proceedings; but rest assured, arrangements have been made for a small group of mercenaries to post flyers all over town—tacked onto lampposts, trapped under windscreen wipers, or carefully released from an automated dispenser concealed in a windy alleyway, to artfully weave and flutter in the breeze—flyers bearing a photograph of your face.

Don’t worry! It’s a nice photograph. In fact it is that rather recent and quite flattering photograph you are rather proud of, the one you would use as your Facebook profile picture, if not for your self-effacing modesty. An admirable character trait! The flyers also bear the text “Attention citizens: C. R. Willis [this is just an example—it will be your name and initials] is expected to attend Return of the Oxford Revue this Friday at the Old Fire Station”.

So go ahead, allow yourself the supreme pleasure of purchasing a ticket, for a meagre £5, and indulge your fans. Yes, your fans! Don’t let it get to your head, but these flyers have travelled widely and many people have already acquired their own tickets to the show, only for a chance to catch a glimpse of your now-famous visage.

RETURN OF THE OXFORD REVUE
Old Fire Station, Friday 4th May (2nd week)
Doors 7.30pm for 8.00 start
Tickets £5

See you there!

GET YOUR LIMITED EDITION SIGNED PINK SHIRT YOURS FOR 3 SHIRTS!!!

A couple of months ago I read here that the Nobel Prize winning playwright and novelist Samuel Beckett used to give the 7’4’ ex World Wrestling Federation champion Andre the Giant lifts to school when they were next-door neighbours in rural France. The other night, a late night Google search for ‘exotic breads’ led me to eventually stumble on a secret document embedded at the bottom of the ‘Focaccia Forum’ homepage, released by a man who’d broken into the Beckett estate, and found hidden cassettes from his old Dictaphone. It appeared the Nobel laureate had sat on it by accident during a difficult handbrake turn (which explains the otherwise enigmatic first line of dialogue), and what resulted was a documentation of their first car journey together. I’ve been working on a piece for Good Housekeeping about the influence of absurdist theatre on American wrestling in the late eighties, so it was a document I needed. Bad. A few emails and the promise of trading recipes involving sourdough later, and I had the transcript in my hands. It was revealing and deeply moving. I could barely finish my bread.

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Hey, those hits just keep on coming! Hit after hit! Hits everywhere! I can’t shake ‘em! Arrrrrgh! Lorraaaaaaaaine!

Lieutenant Colonel T. Oxford Revue’s plane was shot down over the Sea of Japan. It spun in. There were no survivors.