Salient’s Salient Review of Law Revue
Words by Tessa Keenan (Te Ātiawa; she/her)
Te Herenga Waka’s annual Law Revue was on at the prestigious Memorial Theatre from 8-10 September. It was a spectacular celebration of the idiotic undercurrent of Aotearoa New Zealand’s politics, the infamous university name change debate, and the saviour complex that law students have.
The premise was as follows: “When Tyler and Frankie return from law camp…they learn a vengeful ex-Vice Chancellor named Grant [Gilead] and his evil band of cronies [including among others Elon Musk, Kim Kardashian, Ellen Degeneres, and Boris Johnson] have blown up Parliament, taken over [and named the country ‘Wellington University of Wellington of Wellington, New Zealand’].” The “La Resistance” were the good guys in the show: a rebellious group of military-vibe law students out to defeat Gilead. Yes, they did win in the end, and celebrated with a big musical number.
Although the run time was a whopping 2 hours 40 minutes, there were many highlights. I was greatly impressed by the uncannily impressive (and slightly creepy) impressions of well-known politicians such as Jacinda Ardern, Judith Collins, and Chris Luxon. All of the dancing was excellent. The adaptation of ‘Cell Block Tango’ to introduce Hillary Barry, Paddy Gower, Suzy Cato, and Mike Hosking, who had just been defrosted from the basement of the TVNZ building, was a definite crowd favourite. Most of my laughs came from the unassuming and subtle moments of comedy, such as the introduction of Svetlana the dominatrix from Newtown (who had an appointment with Judith Collins), and a skit about two girls having an orgasm to a flat inspection.
On that note, there was a tendency throughout the show for punchlines to be explicitly told to the audience. A character with a tie around his head ran in and hit someone with a baseball bat at the mention of King's College, only for the ensemble to cry “Sam Uffindell!” It’s often funnier when audience members have to put two and two together, and shows the writers have trust in their audience’s brain cells. We didn’t need everything fed to us. We also didn’t need to witness the drier skits of the show, such as a ram being stolen from a farm to depict a “ram raid”. Cutting them out would have saved painful moans from the audience and would have meant I could get an earlier night.
The Law Revue cast and crew can still rejoice. They managed to put together three hilarious nights of entertainment, the first of which was enjoyed right before Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II took her last breath. I heard the joke about Gilead wanting to fuck the Queen was respectfully changed to him wanting to fuck Margaret Thatcher instead. Unfortunately this isn’t nearly as funny. But I’m sure it was still a great show, and I know that anyone who witnessed Fynn Sawyer’s portrayal of Gilead’s multiple personalities (à la Smeagol and Gollum), which included his mother and brother, would say it was one of the most memorable performances they had seen in a long time.