The Shakespeare Revue

An enchanting collection of witty music and skits about the Bard.

Devised for, and first performed by, the Royal Shakespeare Company, this show has been a hit with audiences all over the world. It includes songs and sketches by Alan Bennett, Noël Coward, Stephen Sondheim, Fry and Laurie, Monty Python, Victoria Wood and many more.

Christopher Luscombe read English at Cambridge. He began his career as an actor, spending seven years with the Royal Shakespeare Company. He went on to appear at the National Theatre, the Old Vic, and in the West End. While at Stratford-upon-Avon, he devised and directed The Shakespeare Revue with Malcolm McKee, and this transferred to the Vaudeville Theatre in London. His subsequent productions at Stratford include Twelfth Night, Love’s Labour’s Lost, and Much Ado About Nothing, the last two transferring to Chichester Festival Theatre and then to the Theatre Royal, Haymarket. He is an Associate Artist of the RSC.

His other directing credits in London include Star Quality and The Madness of George III (Apollo); Home and Beauty (Lyric); Fascinating Aïda (Harold Pinter - Olivier Award nomination for Best Entertainment); The Comedy of Errors and The Merry Wives of Windsor (Shakespeare’s Globe); Nell Gwynn (Shakespeare’s Globe and Apollo – Olivier Award for Best New Comedy); A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Regent’s Park); Enjoy (Gielgud); Alphabetical Order (Hampstead); When We Are Married (Garrick - Olivier Award nomination for Best Revival); Travels With My Aunt (Menier Chocolate Factory), and Spamalot (Playhouse).

His production of The Rocky Horror Show has toured for the last sixteen years. It has completed several seasons in the West End, played in Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, and has also been broadcast in cinemas worldwide. It is currently on tour in the UK, as is his production of Private Lives, starring Patricia Hodge and Nigel Havers.

His operatic work includes: Candide and Falstaff (Broadway World nomination for Best New Opera Production) at the Grange Festival, Sweeney Todd for Bergen National Opera and Pagliacci for Opera Ensemble. He returns to the Grange Festival later this year for The Yeomen of the Guard.

Malcolm McKee is an actor, writer, director, and composer who is well known to Radio 4 audiences for his long-running role as Graham Ryder in The Archers. As a composer, Malcolm’s theatre work includes scores for The Madness of George III (Apollo); When We Are Married (Garrick, Olivier Award nomination for Best Revival); The Shakespeare Revue (RSC, Vaudeville, Off-Broadway); Travels with My Aunt (Menier Chocolate Factory); The History Boys (West Yorkshire Playhouse); While the Sun Shines (Theatre Royal Bath); Hay Fever (Minneapolis); Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Leicester Haymarket); The Tempest and The Caucasian Chalk Circle (Pitlochry Festival Theatre); A Midsummer Night's Dream (Wolsey, Ipswich); Vanity Fair (Bristol Old Vic); plus national tours of Single Spies, The Lady in the Van, Blue/Orange, and Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime. He has also written the book, music and lyrics for The Good Companions (Bristol Old Vic); The Wild Party, and Hard Times (Tobacco Factory).

For BBC Radio, Malcolm has composed scores for more than fifty dramas including The Pickwick Papers, Barnaby Rudge, The Old Curiosity Shop, Time and the Conways, Tom and Viv, Still Life, Some Tame Gazelle, The Carlingford Chronicles, The Cry of the Bittern, In Singapore, The Schoolmistress, The Rivals, and The Country Wife starring Sir Michael Hordern. Also for the BBC, Malcolm has written sixteen scripts for Radios 3 and 4, including adaptations of The Comedy of Errors, Grand Hotel, Oh What A Lovely War, Five Children and It, The Story of the Amulet, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, The Wild Party and Coward’s Tonight at 8.30. He has been a script writer and music arranger on the Radio 2 series Friday Night Is Music Night and Carols and Brass. 

Theatre credits as writer/director include: The Shakespeare Revue (RSC, West End, Off-Broadway); Basil Brush: Unleashed (Edinburgh Festival); An Actor’s Life For