Revue Year’s Eve at AS220

It’s New Year’s Eve. The holidays are over. You’ve seen all of your family, you’re fat with love/comfort food and now it’s time to celebrate 2018 with friends. You want to go out and you want to have fun. Providence has so many options. How to choose? You can go to a show. You can go out dancing. Or you can do both! Instead of New Year’s Eve, try Revue Year’s Eve.

After 11 years of gracing the stage at AS220 with their monthly sketch and variety show, the Empire Revue is ready to help you ring in 2018 with a “Night Time is the Right Time” themed episode followed by a dance party. (Check out youtube.com/EmpireRevue for past episodes.) The ever-nocturnal director and lifetime Providence musician Keith Munslow intends to lead the audience through an evening of comedy and music alongside the interesting cast of characters known as the Sparkling Beatniks. These improv actors and comedic writers work together each month to create a one-of-a-kind live show full of hilarious and heartfelt sketch and musical comedy.

Between fits of laughter and merriment, audience members are provided with hand-picked talent from special guests like musicians Matt and Amy as well as comedians Casey Malone and Andrew Mayer. More guests are soon to be announced on the group’s Facebook page (facebook.com/EmpireRevueProvidence).

The cast is accompanied by a live band, The Superchief Trio, otherwise known as the largest trio you’ve ever heard and a major part of the Empire Revue family. This musical power group can bring in a crowd on their own and they end the evening with their boogie-woogie dance party leading toward midnight.

AS220 will have their restaurant, Foo(d), open for guests to enjoy vegan and gluten-free apps, sandwiches and more prior to the show’s start. The craft beer and drink selection at AS220’s bar is great, only surpassed by its service; it will be open until the end of the night and will offer a midnight champagne toast.

I’ve spent the last two New Year’s Eves with the Sparkling Beatniks, and never before had a more enjoyable, laugh-out-loud and stress-free New Year’s Eve. The friends I’ve brought with me have been impressed with the show and its intellectual level of humor, and danced the night away.

Tickets are reasonably priced. Most clubs and venues use the holidays as an excuse to charge more for not much more, but in this case, you get both the show and the dance party. With dinner, rounds of drinks and an Uber home, you aren’t going to start 2018 in the hole.

Empire Revue’s New Years Eve show takes place at AS220 at 9pm. Get your tickets at revue-years-eve.brownpapertickets.com before they sell out.