Law revue: shred the lame jokes please

The singing, dan­cing extra­vag­anza that is the SULS Law Revue is back in town, and judging from pre­vi­ous years, this was one revue that I couldn’t miss. (I’ve also been miss­ing my daily dose of law while doing hon­ours, so I just had to go!) I still recall last year’s French Hakka, and the oh-​​so-​​wrong Kirby sing-​​and-​​dance — and both of these left me with high expect­a­tions about what my peers can do (while dressed and undressed).

Shred — the greatest story in lit­ig­a­tion ever told — star­ted with the cast telling us about Aus­tralian val­ues in lyr­ical fash­ion. I had hoped for some­thing about Shrek, or even some­thing about Shred, but no, we didn’t get any­thing related to the title this year apart from a mal­func­tion­ing fax machine that hap­pens to eat doc­u­ments later on. The first half of the revue was a bit flat I thought. As many com­men­ted, the ideas behind the skits and the jokes were fant­astic, but the exe­cu­tion was lack­ing: the jokes cli­maxed at the start or in the middle, the punch-​​lines often lack­ing. The songs were premised on what could’ve been really great ideas, but the words in them just didn’t carry the amuse­ment through­out. Law stu­dents are said to be left while at uni, and right when they start work­ing, but the Lib­eral horse was flogged well bey­ond death dur­ing the show.

I guess they saved the best till last, for the second half almost made up for what was lack­ing in the first. The anti-​​piracy video (a par­ody of the ones you see before movies) was so hil­ari­ous (“copy­right is… a chose in action”), but accord­ing to Daniel, the idea was copied from the UQ law revue. We heard a song about the snail in the ginger beer bottle from Donoghue v Steven­son, and the Face­book prayer (“deliver us from MySpace”). Back­yard Blitzkrieg trans­formed back­yards and Hitler’s words to great effect. Oh, and the nude scene… a tra­di­tion, but the best I can say about it is that it has poten­tial to be worked a little deeper. The end­ing was a sav­ing grace though: the APEC song (to the tune of YMCA) was well writ­ten and car­ried the joke throughout.

I’d have to say that this year’s wasn’t the best Law Revue I’ve seen, but as the Dir­ector noted in the offi­cial pro­gramme, this year saw the depar­ture of much of the tal­ent from last year. I expect the lame, tacky or tact­less joke or two in a revue, but as with all jokes, tim­ing is of the essence. If the bet­ter skits are any­thing to go by, we should have plenty to laugh ourselves silly in com­ing years. Still, the law revue is a qual­ity pro­duc­tion, and a night well spent — I’d recom­men­ded see­ing it.