Uni Revue 2016: Episode 69

Following up our huge effort in 2015 was no small task. Several of the company members we had spoken to had urged us to go for three in a row - it was figured that a “Revue reset” to renew and re-energise the Revue format would need to be cemented in over time or we’d just see it snap back to the increasingly tired formula. What we didn’t count on was just how tapped out we would be after Indiana Joe.

Our goal remained the same - to continue to aggressively push the envelope of what a Revue could and should be. With Indiana Joe we showed our audience that Revue could be funny at all levels (and not just the Moonah Mums), that it could be witty, thoughtful, and very slickly produced. The show had its bumps which we hoped to correct with our second effort - particularly in utilising the skills of our exceptional MD Tom Howard to their fullest potential.

Episode 69 was approached with some core goals. We had to use our platform and comedy to actually say something (a criticism of high brow audience members that we were vulgar, racist, sexist, but ultimately didn’t use any of that to say anything other than for crass gags). We needed to continue to up the ante in production values and quality. We had to make it more Tasmania-focused.

We pitched a pirate themed show, and decided to have a general mash up of Pirates of the Caribbean, the Pirates of Penzance, Muppet Treasure Island, Hook, Peter Pan, more or less anything was fair game. We won the bid and began production. And then came a fateful production meeting. I had resisted rumblings about Star Wars. In 2010 Ben Paine directed Inglorious Bartletts and was keen on a Star Wars theme. I argued against it, loaning him my MAD Magazine Star Wars special. I said if he could think of any gags not done to death after perusing that and considering recent Star Wars specials like that by Robot Chicken, then he should go for it. But Star Wars felt milked. My recollection is that he concurred, and it was let lie. My position hadn’t changed on this but every other member of the team was all in on Star Wars, so Star Wars it was.

To do Star Wars I knew we couldn’t retread decades of old jokes. The best way would be to see the upcoming Star Wars Episode 7 a couple of times, and develop a script based on that. There were a number of complications, like Kylo Ren, whose character remained vague and undefined until quite late in the production. Lightsaber fights - if we couldn’t make them funny, then we should make them good.

In terms of man hours put in, we certainly turned up the dial. Episode 69 was enormous. Helen Cronin’s work in props and costumes was an absolute feat and I am still amazed at some of the visuals in the show - particularly the finale with the X-wings, TIE Fighters, duelling, rebel pilots, robed chanters etc. Some of the material was brilliant. Some of it…not so brilliant. The notes I had kept for years for gags and ideas had mostly been used up on Indiana Joe, and with a lot of our core writing team dispersed more pressure was put on fewer confident writers to generate material. Some decisions were made that are impossible to reconcile today - the Chinese character in “When I Grow Up” who was conceived to be sympathetic and inclusive became a racist caricature. The show was too long and too ambitious. We cornered ourselves into needing to keep some weaker sketches to facilitate changes.

Online discourse was heated - that Revue was old fashioned, out of date, out of touch. Avant garde mouthpieces like Ryk Goddard slammed the Revue as racist and misogynistic (before eventually revealing he hadn’t seen this one or any in at least a decade). Committee and cast members regretfully engaged with the public. Sales were slumping. Feedback was relatively negative. We were accused of being transphobic, of being bigoted. We incorporated John and Cassie X (as well as the Betta Milk Man, David Walsh, The Cripps Ambassador etc) to try to make it more Tasmanian themed but we got odd backlash against that with an assumption we were trying to make comments on John and Cassie’s relationship (We came up with the punful “Johneral X” first, and then made Cassie the leader of the Tasmanian TV-ad star led Resistance, that was about as deep as the thinking went).

Part of me dreaded re-watching the video, which was finally edited and shown to cast and members in 2024. Especially sitting in a room of my younger peers, some of whom joined the company much later than 2016. I was nervous that it would be all the things people had said eight years before - that instead of trying to say something positive and using our platform for good, we had made a ghastly and out of touch monstrosity.

Afterwards the discussion was brilliant. Everyone was quick to nod and agree that some stuff just went too far, or too obviously missed the mark it was aiming for. But a consensus in the room was that the through line and the ending - our Kylo Ren was Kaylo Jen aka Kaitlyn Jenner - was actually a bit ahead of its time, and overall it had more in common with where things were heading rather than where they were at in that particular time. For the first time in eight years I no longer felt ashamed of what I thought was a catastrophic swing and a miss, but kind of proud that despite the mistakes we made in the production that overall we had achieved most of what we set out to do.

After Episode 69, Casey, Kristy and I called it quits on the three year plan. We were all cooked and spiralling in our personal lives. Revue had taken its toll from us, and we had nothing more to pay. That said, we may still come back and complete that trilogy…

Justin Wildsmith, co-director