Revues are a tricky animal. I believe (don't quote me on this) you are permitted to do up to three songs by a specific composer without having to obtain the rights to perform them. Of course, obtaining the orchestrations is impossible because the licensing houses have those. That does not mean, however, that you may perform three songs from each show that that composer has written. Therefore, you may not "write" your own Sondheim revue by performing three songs from each of his shows. That's illegal. There are SO many Sondheim revues available that there's no reason for anyone to write their own. And there are revues available for nearly every major composer of musical theatre--Andrew Lloyd Webber's "The Music of Andrew Lloyd Webber," Sondheim's "Side by Side by Sondheim," Herman's "ShowTune" (which MTI now licenses), Rodger's "A Grand Night for Singing," Loesser's "Perfectly Frank," Coward's "Oh, Coward!," Porter's "Red, Hot & Cole," etc. They're all over the place. If you wrote a revue with three songs by each of those composers, that'd be OK, but you'd have to pay to get the full orchestrations. It's a tricky thing, licensing. And then you get into the professional theatres and their box office percentages and guarantees and merchandising percentages...it's nuts.
