revuen.
/rᵻˈvjuː/, U.S. /rəˈvju/, /riˈvju/ 1.
a. A light theatrical entertainment comprising a series of short (usually satirical) sketches, comic turns, songs, etc.; (also) an elaborate musical show consisting of numerous unrelated performances. Chiefly without article: the genre of such entertainments.
ΘΚΠ
society > leisure > the arts > performance arts > variety, etc. > [noun] > revue
passing show1715
revue1840
follies1874
review1897
revusical1915
Living Newspaper1925
Revudeville1932
1840 Times 28 Dec. 5/3 The author, inventor, or whatever he is called, has not erred in approximating the old English pantomime to the French revue.
1872 J. R. Planché Recoll. I. iv. 73 My theatrical labours in the year 1825 terminated with the production at the Adelphi..of a one-act piece on the 12th December, entitled ‘Success; or a Hit if you like it’, which I only mention because it was the first attempt in this country to introduce that class of entertainment so popular in Paris called ‘Revue’.
1879 J. R. Planché Extravaganzas III. 311 It is, in fact, ‘a dramatic political allegory’. A Revue, not of theatrical and other popular novelties..but of the State of Europe at a critical period.
1899 Times 4 Apr. 5/2 It looks as if musical farces were declining in popularity when a specimen of this class of piece has to be called a revue and announced as an ‘entirely new form of entertainment’. The revue..has never had the same favour here that it enjoys in Paris.
1912 Tatler 30 Oct. 145 ‘Kill that Fly.’ The New Revue which is Crowding the New Alhambra.
1923 R. Nevill World of Fashion 1837–1922 xii. 269 Anything like a real revue is impossible in modern London... Any allusion to current politics such as are made in Parisian revues is at once denounced as being in bad taste.
1946 N. Coward Diary 26 Jan. (2000) 50 Slightly bombshell news that the revue is to close on 16 February. Personally I couldn't care less.
1967 P. G. Wodehouse Company for Henry v. 98 One of those big production numbers so popular in revue, where the whole strength of the company let themselves go in uninhibited dance.
1967 Oxf. Compan. Theatre (ed. 3) 798/1 During the Second World War the vogue for revue continued... Revue became a feature of the little theatres..but it was not until the advent in London of Beyond the Fringe,..which was seen in Edinburgh on 10 May, 1961, that satire entered the field.
1972 Daily Tel. 22 Nov. 15 The new revue at the Cambridge, ‘Behind the Fridge’, stars Peter Cooke, Dudley Moore, and no one else.
2004 Time Out N.Y. 4 Nov. 85/2 CCL's improv comedy revue, Unconventional Humor , finds a new home at the New York Improv's second stage.
b. figurative. Something likened to a revue. rare.In quot. 1941 perhaps with punning reference to sense 2.
ΚΠ
1934 T. S. Eliot Elizabethan Ess. 167 The romantic comedy is a skilful concoction of inconsistent emotion, a revue of emotion... It consists in an internal incoherence of feelings, a concatenation of emotions.
1941 P. Larkin Dances in Doggerel ii, in Early Poems 164 Now the old year lies behind In ashes, and at last I find One who in slapstick Spring's revue With beauty could astonish too.
2. A review, a retrospective survey. rare.
ΚΠ
1872 Musical World 6 July 433/2 I send you later a revue of all musical fetes, which have taken place already here.
1899 A. E. W. Mason Miranda of Balcony iii. 35 After he had fallen asleep, a curtain was raised upon a fantastic revue of the past week.
1996 E. Y. Neaman Dubious Past (1999) vi. 200 The novel ends with a revue of the history of defeated warriors, among them Cato, Hannibal, Indians, Boers, and Montezuma.
Compounds
General attributive, as revue star, revue theatre, etc.; also in parasynthetic use.
ΚΠ
1913 Oakland (Calif.) Tribune 22 June 1/2 His latest London exploit was when he took Miss Levey, the revue star, for a ride in his machine.
1919 B. Tarkington Let. 30 Mar. in On Plays (1959) 10 What is really most valuable in it is the revelation, by an intimate, of the modern ‘Revue’ girl.
1933 M. Allingham Sweet Danger xvi. 197 She washed and changed with the speed of a revue star.
1933 P. Godfrey Back-stage xiv. 174 The attempt to attract the smart, sophisticated section of the post-War public into patronizing the revue theatres.
1958 B. Nichols Sweet & Twenties 141 Those most precious of all items to the revue writer, the ‘front-cloth numbers’, which can be played without props or scenery.
1963 New Yorker 15 June 7 Ronny Graham's revue-eyed view of life..sometimes gets bug-eyed.
1975 Listener 9 Jan. 57/1 With all the resources of splendid new theatres..we..[are] dragging up old revue skits.
1999 Vanity Fair (N.Y.) Dec. 374/1 In those early weeks Prima was able to hone the off-kilter revue dynamic that became famous.
2003 C. R. Ronai & R. Cross in D. Harper & H. M. Lawson Cultural Study Wk. 122 Nina, a White revue dancer, also states, ‘I'll never go nude. I just can't.’
Derivatives
reˈvuist n. now rare a writer of revues.
ΘΚΠ
society > leisure > the arts > performance arts > variety, etc. > [noun] > writer of
vaudevillist1839
revuist1905
1905 Bystander 24 May 371/2 The modern concierge is, the revuists think, in danger of becoming a Don Juan at our gates.
1927 Observer 25 Sept. 11/1 Alfred Savoir, in collaboration with Rip, the revuist, has written ‘Comme le temps passe’.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, March 2010; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
<
n.1840