AustLit

Veronic Kelly examines two entertainments that were advertised as ‘revues’ and which premiered in Australia in 1913 and 1914. These productions, Come Over Here and Hullo Ragtime, were both localised versions of West End revues of the same titles, and Kelly argues that the immediate contexts of these productions exemplify the lines of local flow and blockage in the processes of the international circulation of personnel and genres of popular commercial entertainment. As she notes, revues in this period were closely related to ideas of generic rule-breaking and cosmopolitan modernity. They are also intricately linked with the technologies of recorded sound which now complemented the sale of sheet music for domestic consumption and leisure.