Revue Sans Frontieres

Fools are my theme, let satire be my song.
Lord Byron

I went to a play tonight with my sister Amber at the Wharf theatre, Revue Sans Frontieres. The two of us howled with laughter, whistled and clapped throughout the show. It was the funniest thing we had seen in a long time.

REVUE SANS FRONTIÈRES from the  Sydney Theatre Company.

With Jonathan Biggins, Phillip Scott, Valerie Bader and Garry Scale

The world changed on 9/11. New, harsh, aggressive voices had us frightened – and there were the terrorists to worry about as well. Now, more than ever before, people in the western world (and the other bits) felt a desperate need for some decent cutting-edge political satire. But whole areas of sub-Saharan Africa had virtually no contemporary social lampooning; the Balkans hadn’t had any delicious irony for years and even within Australia, isolated communities still had to make do with worn-out copies of The Gillies Report.

Thankfully, a group of concerned satirists recognised the burning need and created the relief organisation "Revue sans Frontières", bringing world’s best practice parody to people who don’t even know they haven’t got it.

I had originally planned to take my Irish friend Cait but she had to go to New Zealand for work this week so luckily my sister had just come back to Sydney as her University year has also come to an end. It was probably good that Cait wasn’t able to come as the humour related to mostly Australian politics and I am not sure she would have fully appreciated all of the references.

There was one skit in particular which sent up the New Zealand Prime Minister, Helen Clark that made us roar out of control with laughter.

At the end of the play, I mentioned to Amber that my team had called me the walking theasaurus this week and had she ever noticed that our family loved language and words? That in fact, we loved plays on words as a source of our humour. She was amazed that I had brought it up as she had the same conversation with her friend Monique before coming back to Sydney. That is what I love about my sister, she gets me.