(from Fr.; It. rivista; Sp. revista).
A topical, satirical show consisting of a series of scenes and episodes, usually having a central theme but not a dramatic plot, with spoken verse and prose, sketches, songs, dances, ballet and speciality acts. Revue developed in France during the 19th century, was taken up by other countries including Britain and the USA, and enjoyed its greatest acclaim and significance between the world wars. In revue there are elements of other stage forms such as cabaret, variety show, vaudeville, pantomime, burlesque and musical comedy.
ANDREW LAMB, DEANE L. ROOT/PATRICK O’CONNOR
Revue evolved as a distinct genre in France in the early 19th century, consisting of satirical scenes ‘passing in review’ of recent events. During the reign of Louis Philippe (1830–48) it gained favour as an annual production, satirizing the theatrical productions of the previous season, and particularly the salient features and chief performers of the larger genres presented at the Opéra and Opéra-Comique. In Le carnaval des revues (Bouffes Parisiens, 1860) Offenbach incurred the wrath of Wagner with his satire of ‘the musician of the future’. During the Second Empire (to 1870) theatres increasingly presented revues emphasizing visual spectacle, with expensive costumes, scenery and stage machinery helping to create a more lavish and variegated entertainment. These works stimulated the rapid development of stage technology and set design, one element of the visual splendour being the tableau vivant, an allegorical still-life that helped to introduce nudity to the stage.
The typical revue of the 1880s was still a relatively inexpensive and simple entertainment, appealing to audiences mainly by the wit of the dialogue and the vivacity of those who played in it. Apart from the final tableau the scenery was often primitive and the music often a rehash of well-worn tunes. A compère or commère was an essential of the entertainment, interpolating explanatory or cynical remarks throughout – though the commère often had little to do except appear in practically no clothes. In 1886, however, the Folies-Bergère staged the first successful ‘outfit revue’, which abandoned the satirical bite of earlier shows and replaced it with suave cosmopolitanism, lavish visual effects, extravagant costumes and elaborately staged dances and songs. It prompted many imitations, and during the 20th century the main Parisian revues followed this model – particularly at the Folies-Bergère and the Casino de Paris. The entertainment revolved round popular entertainers such as Mistinguett (Jeanne Bourgeois) (1873–1956) – famous for her valse chaloupée (Apache dance) – Maurice Chevalier (1888–1972), and the black American Josephine Baker (1906–75), who in 1925 first scandalized Paris with her erotic dances in the Revue nègre. The revues’ texts and scores were compiled from many collaborators, with new material frequently inserted, the wider musical impact deriving from the songs of such composers as Maurice Yvain (Mon homme and J’en ai marre for Mistinguett), José Padilla (Ça … c’est Paris and Valencia for Mistinguett), Henri Christiné (Valentine for Chevalier) and Vincent Scotto (J’ai deux amours for Josephine Baker).
After World War II, the Parisian theatres such as the Folies-Bergère and the Lido continued the tradition of revue. In the early 1970s, with music by Serge Gainsbourg and others, Roland Petit revived the genre with two shows at the Casino de Paris, starring his wife, the dancer and singer Zizi Jeanmaire (Zizi je t’aime, 1972), and Josephine Baker made her farewell in 1975, a few days before her death, in a revue at the Bobino. A final attempt to revive the style at the Folies-Bergère, in 1994, directed by the Argentine Alfredo Arias, proved a failure.
By the 1920s revue had also become well established in other countries. During the last decade of the 19th century Berlin had the first of the annual revues at the Metropoltheater. They featured such star performers as Fritzi Massary and Josef Giampietro, who parodied the aristocrats and officials of the empire in songs filled with references to current events; the music was provided by the house conductor-composers including Victor Hollaender (1901–13) and Paul Lincke (1908–10). After World War I the Berlin revue took on more of the lavishness of Parisian spectacle revues, parading semi-nude women, sumptuous and massive sets, and elaborately choreographed production numbers. The music by Mischa Spoliansky for Es liegt in der Luft (1928) and Rudolf Nelson for Lichter von Berlin (1927) and Das spricht Bände (1929) drew on influences from American jazz and Argentine tango to make that particular sound which is always associated with Berlin in the 1920s, and which was revived in many Berlin revues after the fall of the wall in 1989. Similar trends were discernible in other continental countries, notably in Spain, from which emerged the singer Racquel Meller and the composer José Padilla, both of whom consolidated their personal success in Paris during the 1920s.
In Britain burlesque and satire had long been staples of the theatre, and one-man entertainments by Charles Dibdin (from the 1780s to 1804), Charles Mathews (from 1808 to 1835) and others embraced dramatic monologues, songs, topical sketches and a wide variety of themes during an evening’s performance. Perhaps the first unified revue in London was Success, or A Hit If You Like It (1825), a one-act allegorical afterpiece written by J.R. Planché, who was also responsible for various successors. By the 1890s, however, the form was still scarcely known in Britain, and Under the Clock (1893; music by Edward Jones) and Pot-pourri (1899; music by Napoleon Lambelet) were both pioneering efforts, modelled on the French form and satirizing recent theatrical productions. During the early 1900s revues began to appear as part of an evening’s entertainment at variety theatres such as the Coliseum, but it was the advent of ragtime that finally established the genre in London. In particular, shows like Hullo, Ragtime (1912) and Hullo, Tango (1913), produced by Albert de Courville as part of the entertainment at the Alhambra Theatre, captured the popular imagination with their fast-moving presentation and as the means whereby new American song and dance styles and performers were introduced to Britain.
A more intimate style of revue had been introduced to London by the Follies, a company led by H.G. Pelissier from 1897 to 1913 and featuring a small cast and sparse sets. More significant shows on a smaller scale were those introduced to London by C.B. Cochran, who based his style on pieces still performed at small Parisian theatres and dependent on more subtle, satirical humour and on the talents of individual, versatile performers. For his one-act prototype Odds and Ends (1914) he imported various French performers, including Alice Delysia, and the show’s success prompted a full-length successor simply called More (1915) (as with many revues the titles reflected their piecemeal nature). Cochran’s example was followed by André Charlot, and their productions during the 1920s represented the peak of the genre’s success in London, attracting the talents of leading performers, writers, composers, designers and choreographers.
Although the topicality and localized satire of revues made them unsuitable for export, there was considerable interchange of artists and material between London and New York. Charlot’s London Revue of 1924, using successful material from various London revues, first introduced to New York Gertrude Lawrence (singing Philip Braham’s Limehouse Blues), Beatrice Lillie and Jack Buchanan. Since the music for revues usually came from various sources the scores were traditionally the responsibility of the theatre’s conductor, but specialist songwriters were increasingly used. Among composers of World War I revues were Herman Finck, James W. Tate, Herman Darewski and Nat D. Ayer, whose score for The Bing Boys are Here (1916) included ‘If you were the only girl in the world’. Later composers included Ivor Novello, whose songs for Charlot’s A to Z (1921) included ‘And her mother came too’, and Noël Coward, whose talents as songwriter as well as performer were first highlighted in Charlot’s London Calling (1923). Coward went on to produce some of his best songs for On with the Dance (1925) and This Year of Grace (1928) for Cochran, who was also quick to give opportunities to the young Rodgers and Hart (One Dam Thing after Another, 1927, with Jessie Matthews singing ‘My heart stood still’; see illustration) and Cole Porter (Wake Up and Dream, 1929). Cochran’s revues also featured ballets; it was Cochran’s 1930 Revue, for example, that introduced Lord Berners’s score Luna Park.
Cochran and Charlot continued their series of revues into the 1930s. But the arrival of the talking picture seriously affected the vogue for witty, tuneful, spectacular stage shows, and the name ‘revue’ survived more securely in the non-stop nudist shows of the Windmill Theatre. The 1930s and 40s saw some successful productions by George Black – during World War II the most successful London revues were at the Ambassadors Theatre (Sweet and Low, Sweeter and Lower, etc.), starring Hermione Gingold, Hermione Baddeley and Henry Kendall, a series that continued into the late 1940s with Àla carte at the Savoy Theatre with music by Charles Zwar. In the late 1940s and early 50s a new generation of composers, among them Sandy Wilson, Richard Addinsell and Donald Swann, contributed to the new style of London revue, especially those devised by Laurier Lister such as Penny Plain, with performers including Elisabeth Welch, Joyce Grenfell and Fenella Fielding. Swann teamed up with Michael Flanders to perform a hugely successful series of two-men shows, including At the Drop of a Hat. Although each decade of the late 20th century saw attempts to revive large-scale revues, the most successful shows were those with one group of performers (Fascinating Aida, Kit and the Widow) or compilations of songs by one composer (Side by Side by Sondheim, Cowardy Custard). The composer Martyn Jacques and his group the Tiger Lillies staged the brilliant ‘junk opera’ Shock-Headed Peter, based on Struwwelpeter, by Heinrich Hoffmann, which with its integration of puppets, mime, singing and dancing had the feel of a new start for the revue format.
In the USA revue developed mostly from extravagant burlesques and vaudeville in New York during the late 19th century. John Brougham wrote one of the first, The Dramatic Review for 1868 (1869), an afterpiece burlesquing the previous year’s popular theatre, but the show was unsuccessful and prompted no imitations. The first popular revue came in 1894 with The Passing Show (music by Ludwig Englander), which, like Brougham’s piece, was a satire on theatrical productions but which incorporated some topical songs in the style of Tin Pan Alley. Soon there were many revues on the New York stage. Those starring Joe Weber and Lew Fields (1896–1904) had vaudeville-like farce and pantomime, humorous songs, dances and more travesties of theatrical productions.
But the real establishment of American revue came with the Follies of 1907, ‘a musical review of the New York sensations of the past season’. Produced by Florenz Ziegfeld junior, it appropriated the name and style of the Folies-Bergère, though the female chorus had to attract more by sheer beauty than mere nakedness. It became the first of an annual series of Ziegfeld Follies that became progressively more spectacular. Ziegfeld set the standard with very large casts, an emphasis on female glamour, grand costumes and sets (notably by Joseph Urban), fast-paced scenes and star performers like Fanny Brice, W.C. Fields, Eddie Cantor and Marilyn Miller. The shows remained a leading form of American stage entertainment into the 1920s and produced many imitations, notably the Shubert brothers’ The Passing Show series from 1912, the Greenwich Village Follies from 1919, George White’s Scandals from 1919, Irving Berlin’s four Music Box Revues (1921–4) and the Earl Carroll Vanities from 1922.
The shows’ songs and dances were part of the humour and variety element and were rarely satirical: the texts and scores were usually collaborations lacking a cohesive style and having new numbers interpolated as needed during the run of a show. Continental successes were sometimes featured (Fanny Brice first sang Yvain’s ‘My Man’ in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1921); but over the years the revues gave opportunities to many up-and-coming American songwriters and introduced songs that have become established favourites. The Ziegfeld Follies introduced ‘Shine on, Harvest Moon’ (1908; Nora Bayes and Jack Norworth), ‘Row, Row, Row’ (1912; James V. Monaco), ‘A pretty girl is like a melody’ (1919; Irving Berlin), ‘Second Hand Rose’ (1921; James F. Hanley) and ‘My Blue Heaven’ (1927; Walter Donaldson); The Passing Show had ‘I’m forever blowing bubbles’ (1918; Jean Kenbrovin and John William Kellette) and Donaldson’s ‘Carolina in the Morning’ (1922); and George White’s Scandals introduced George Gershwin’s ‘I’ll build a stairway to paradise’ (1922) and ‘Somebody loves me’ (1924) and DaSylva, Brown and Henderson’s ‘The Birth of the Blues’ and ‘Black Bottom’ (both 1926).
It was another series of shows, the Garrick Gaieties, that first brought attention to Rodgers and Hart with ‘Manhattan’ (1925) and ‘Mountain Greenery’ (1926); but these were shows in which simplicity and economy replaced elaborateness of setting and costume. Smaller-scale but still lavish revues were also given in rooftop theatres and night clubs, notably the Cotton Club in Harlem (music by Jimmy McHugh and later Harold Arlen). From the 1920s more serious, intimate revue came to the fore as lavish productions waned during the economic depression. The Little Show (1929) was one of a series that made the name of Arthur Schwartz, another being The Band Wagon (1931), which featured the Astaires and the song ‘Dancing in the Dark’. Three’s a Crowd (1930), in which Libby Holman sang Johnny Green’s ‘Body and Soul’, and Irving Berlin’s As Thousands Cheer (1933) were other noteworthy shows; but the departure of the leading composers for Hollywood hastened the decline of the genre, although giving opportunities to newer songwriters such as Burton Lane, Vernon Duke and Harold Rome (Pins and Needles, 1937). After World War II, revues were performed less frequently at large Broadway theatres; there was a final attempt at a Ziegfeld-type Follies in 1956, starring Tallulah Bankhead, but it closed out of town. The most influential revues of the postwar era were the series of New Faces presented by Leonard Sillman, which introduced such players as Eartha Kitt, Maggie Smith, Madeline Kahn and Robert Klein.
While the song-and-dance revue found new life on television, satirical intimate revue was fostered by repertory companies throughout the country, notably in San Francisco (The Committee) and Chicago (Second City) in the 1960s. The productions more often favoured improvised sketches and topical commentary on American society, abandoning complex choreography, elaborate sets and even clothes (in Oh Calcutta, 1969): the music increasingly used rock and electronic idioms. As in London, it was small-scale, one-performer or one-composer shows that seemed to attract the most success. The outstanding revue of the 1990s, though, was the history of black American dance, Bring in ’da noise, bring in ’da funk, with music by Daryl Waters, Zane Mark and Ann Duquesnay, which showed that the revue format had a new life.
ES (‘Revista’, ‘Revista da camera’; V. Ottolenghi and others)
C. Smith: Musical Comedy in America (New York, 1950, 2/1981)
R. Baral: Revue: a Nostalgic Reprise of the Great Broadway Period (New York, 1962, 2/1970)
O. Schneidereit: Berlin, wie es weint und lacht: Spaziergänge durch Berlins Operetten-geschichte (Berlin, 1968)
R. Mander and J. Mitchenson: Revue: a Story in Pictures (London, 1971)
G. Bordman: American Musical Revue (New York, 1985)
J.E. Hirsch: Glorifying the American Showgirl (diss., New York U., 1988)
J. Pessis and J. Crepineau: Le Moulin Rouge (Paris, 1989)
J. Pessis and J. Crepineau: Les Folies Bergère (Paris, 1990)
R. and P. Ziegfeld: The Ziegfeld Touch (New York, 1993)