The Durham Revue: Raiders of the Lost Laughs is a fun hour of sketch comedy from this year’s new troupe of the legacy student comedy group. The show is entertaining and dynamic, with effective pacing and precise lighting effects. With a range of modern sketches and timeless ones — from scenes in a town’s Facebook group, to BBC One’s The Traitors, and a primary school theatre class being reprimanded for their subpar performances in Waiting for Godot rehearsals.
The show is akin to a chocolate selection box, with there being a sketch suited to every audience member in the collection, but not every joke necessarily landing perfectly for every audience member.
The audience participation portion of the show is strong. One of the most amusing scenes contains a reenactment of a scene from the Titanic, having an audience member on stage to perform as the mackerel (a crucial character, naturally). This followed the selected participant being ‘prepared’ for the scene with a synchronised dramatic exercise. A key reason these scenes were so successfully hilarious was the cleverly incorporated selection of an audience member who seemed well suited to being on stage under the guise of an impromptu ‘casting call’ with the ‘director’ taking their pick from the audience.
The quality of performances did vary across the show, however. Some of the actors give strikingly impressive performances in some scenes, but then in other instances give lacklustre and somewhat hollow performances that seemed to just be line recitation.
The Durham Revue: Raiders of the Lost Laughs is running until 30 August at Belly Dancer at Underbelly, Cowgate. Buy tickets here.
Image by Megan Dunlop, provided to The Student as press material.
