The Wharf Revue: The Patriotic Rag

Come rain or shine, in sickness and in health, from year to year The Wharf Revue only gets richer and funnier.  Its dedicated writers and staple cast, Biggins, Forsythe, and Scott, have spent some 18 years in bringing their craft to such a finely honed point that you can only marvel at the ingenuity that makes you laugh even at a joke by Donald J. Trump himself, live on stage near you.  The writers’ ability to find new humour in the same dread unprogressive politics and to bring to light so many new aspects of it is a mark of their genius.  More impressive still is their ability to subvert with such apparent ease — and in spectacular costumes — songs about anything else at all in the cause of making great fun of every deserving politician.

The greatness of such giants as these shows not only in their striking the nub of an issue with surgical precision and infectious glee but doing it with sublime musical artistry.  This year’s rich, harmonically complex renditions included musical numbers from the movies, from jazz, and from hard rock that specialist singers find challenging.  Under Phillip Scott’s brilliant musical direction, these seasoned talents made hilarious play of the most difficult musical challenges and did so without faltering.

With its unsurpassed comic delivery of perfect lines and great musicality by actors with faultless delivery of their victims’ personas, the 2017 Wharf Revue deserves the widest possible audience, and you’ll kick yourself if you miss it.

John P. Harvey

Image: [L–R] Phillip Scott, Jonathan Biggins, and Drew Forsythe, in The Wharf Revue: The Patriotic Rag. Photo: Swift Taylor.