Adelaide Cabaret Festival. Sydney Theatre Company. Her Majesty's Theatre. 15 Jun 2016
The Wharf Reviue, written by stalwarts Jonathan Biggins, Drew Forsythe and Phillip Scott, is a Sydney treasure - celebrating 15 years and 21 shows this season. Lampooning Australian politics and some other key current affairs figures - those from the left with a measure of mercy and those from the right with merciless mirth - I found this show to be non-stop funny and a hit of my Cabaret Festival.
With Amanda Bishop (famous for her Julia Gillard of the ABC miniseries, At Home With Julia, shown in September 2011 - Gee, was it that long ago already?), the show goes like a rocket because of the team's incredible talent for mimicry, strong vocals and singing voices. The show begins in the Howard Bunker - the final hours of the 2007 election - and takes us right up to the present PM. Live performances were separated by filmed entertainment to allow costume and personality changes. As well as being a review of national politics and issues, the Revue reprised their past successes.
Throughout the political narrative, there are copious outstanding performances. Biggins created an incredibly credible Costello, to be followed by an uncanny Keating in a sketch where Paul and Bob are in wheelchairs plotting a political roadmap at the old folk's home. Finally, Biggins comes out as Tony Abbott, and I can't believe my eyes how he apes the body language. Scott's sketch of Howard is hilarious, complete with pouting lower lip, and his Rudd is side-splitting in a parody of Gillard's and Rudd's complex psychodrama in the context of Phantom Of The Opera. Forsythe's private school-proper Alexander Downer was delicious while his rap as Christopher Pyne accurately betrayed the latter's persona. In a spoof of Les Miserables - called Les Liberables - political correctness stalls the insurrection. Clive Palmer and Gina Rinehart gets what's coming to them in a duet of entitlement to the nations' resources, portrayed with delightful verisimilitude (catch it on YouTube). The classics were not ignored with politicised Joyce and Dylan Thomas. How about arts funding-wrecker George Brandis in a tutu? The cast ended the cavalcade with a live Goon Show. Gosh, I could go on describing sketch after sketch, each performed with clarity and top quality performance.
Not to be missed. Bravo!
David Grybowski
When: 15-18 June
Where: Her Majesty's Theatre
Bookings: adelaidecabaretfestival.com.au
