Review: Commerce Revue 2022 — A confident, innocent, and magnificent fuck off to overthinkers
Oh, the bliss when you get to tick off almost everything on the list of things you expect and desire from a contemporary Commerce Revue.
Image: Commerce Revue 2022.
Contains mild spoilers.
Oh, the bliss when you get to tick off almost everything on the list of things you expect and desire from a contemporary Commerce Revue. Commerce Revue 2022: Show and Tell! showcases an upbeat bunch of cast-devised sketches that force the audience to gargle their guffaws — and forget their ambition to find out what causes the chuckles — if they ever had any.
Regardless of the abundance of political, philosophical, and economic references, this catchy cavalcade of choreographed, unrelated absurdities is supposed to be savoured on the surface level, with the “confidence and innocence of a primary school kid,” as Co-Director Eilish Wilkinson relays when asked to explain the show and tell theme of this year’s show. It’s simply down to business; if it’s funny, it’s funny. It’s a fuck off to overthinkers and permission to surf on confusion instead of swimming in it.
Many of the 38 sketches are like a mini musical, letting the whole cast take turns dazzling the audience with their skill, enthusiasm, and creativity, surveying topics such as life, veganism, death, greed, love in the digital age, and the relationships between all these things.
We pity the pig (Jenna Lewis) who is forced to market itself as vegan pork. We gasp at the fate awaiting Hansel (Lewis Ulm) and Gretel (Lara Newman) who, during a trip to our time, end up in a Witch’s (Matthew Forbes) kettle after finding an ad on Facebook Marketplace claiming that the kettle is for free (a brilliant way to show the real price of using ‘free’ social media platforms; ourselves). We delight at the steaming yet steely duet sung by the aroused Android user (Callum Gallagher) who insists that he bought Alexa’s love for 500 bucks, and Alexa (Lewis Ulm) who begs him to let her go. The self-control of the writers is admirable: how they succeed in moving so swiftly between such enticingly dramatic scenarios without being sucked into and forced to expand on them is close to incomprehensible.
Apart from being overwhelmingly catchy, the show also has several immersive elements. At one point a heated exchange arises between a cast member and a person in the audience as they accuse them of deserting Commerce Revue to join the Science Revue instead despite not studying a science degree. A hopeful murmur in the audience emerges: “I didn’t know it was possible to join the Commerce or the Science Revue with an Arts degree!” Instead of simply announcing an intermission, we’re ushered out after a sudden fatality: Dolly Parton (Georgia Condon) climbs the stalls to serenade work-life balance with a rendition of 9 To 5, but falls and breaks her neck. And then there’s the constant, contagious chuckle compelling you to join in regardless of whether you have any idea of what you’re enjoying or not.
Sometimes people laugh just to hide that they can’t find what’s funny, but assume that there must be something since everyone else is laughing. Sometimes dazzling randomness is just a way to camouflage a lack of creativity.
Nowadays there’s nothing novel about creating humour in the spirit of a primary school kid. Random humour created with the confidence — a little less innocence — of a child can be enjoyed in abundance on TikTok. What’s novel and revolutionary is when a show embarks on a deep, juicy plot that dazzles whilst demanding time and thought from its audience. Still, it’s hard to complain: the show is undeniably ingenious, considering how intuitively (and instinctively) fun each sketch is.
We laugh uncontrollably in the moment, but that’s all there is. It’s like quick carbs, a rush of energy with nothing left to digest. Perhaps you might say it’s like life itself, simply down to business: when the show’s over, it’s over — end of analysis. A dip of emptiness ensues as the applause fades, and a visceral craving for another dazzlingly random, hilariously farfetched, intuitively fun, and shamelessly surface-level show remains.
Writers: 2022 Commerce Revue Cast
Directors: Eilish Wilkinson and Aidan Pollock
Producer: Vanessa Li
Starring: Leah Bruce, Georgia Condon, Alison Cooper, Izzy Donague, Lachie Double, Sarah Doyle, Matthew Forbes, Callum Gallagher, Hanna Kwan, Jenna Lewis, Lara Newman, Gita Pastro, Emily Small, Lewis Ulm, and Elliot Ulm.