An Evening With Max Gillies. Wander Productions. The Canberra Theatre Centre. 23 Oct 2014
With the recent passing of Gough Whitlam, it was quite timely that veteran political satirist and impersonator Max Gillies came to town with his one-man show ‘Once Were Leaders’ – in fact he dedicated the evening to the former Prime Minister, whom he clearly had much affection for.
Gillies essentially had one mission, and that was to answer the question, ‘Is Australia currently suffering a leadership deficit, or have our politicians always been pretty ordinary?’ The answer it seems (although somewhat opaque), with the exception of Whitlam, is that we’ve been looking at the past through slightly rose coloured glasses. However, this came with the caveat that we’re entering especially dismal territory of late.
An intimate and relaxed production with a meandering narrative, Gillies starts off the night with a keynote speech at the podium setting the agenda. Standing firmly on his soapbox, he provides an absolutely scathing review of the current state of politics that, in his words, are barely worthy of satire.
While he wouldn’t be donning the make up and prosthetics on this particular occasion, what we did get was a retrospective on some of his most popular impersonations via stills on the screen behind him (that also featured demonstrative videos of actual political figures), with Gillies performing some of his favourite speeches in the flesh.
The fact that he was visually not in character had no impact on the authenticity of his performance, as his immense talent at embodying the essence of a subject transcended the need for any of the usual painstaking preparation. But though his many collaborators over the years, including his make up artists but also his speechwriters (Don Watson, Patrick Cook, Guy Rundle and Heathcote Williams), were absent that night, many mentions of them and demonstrations of their work were made in appreciative tributes.
Billy McMahon, Bob Hawke, Kevin Rudd: these were some of our former Australian leaders who got the Gillies treatment. Also in the mix was a brilliant speech ‘featuring’ former Labor powerbroker Graham Richardson, and going further afield, the likes of none other than the Queen, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan.
Through his deft analysis and infamous scripts, Gillies strips back, exposes and distils these leaders beyond the heroes or villains that Australians have relegated them to in the national imagination, and puts into perspective their place in leadership history.
It’s been a long time since I’ve heard an audience laughing so jubilantly hard during a night out at the Playhouse, with a large portion of those in attendance politically savvy baby boomers who have clearly enjoyed Gillies’ work for some time. The great thing about his style is that the laughs he draws from people come from an understated nuance and subtlety – his long, winding yet flawless monologues assume your knowledge and intelligence and refrain from eliciting cheap, moronic laughs.
The second half of ‘Once Were Leaders’ was devoted to a Q & A section, with the crowd surprisingly reticent when it came to questioning Gillies. However, to fill the gaps while people got over their shyness, we were told stories of the costuming mishaps and experiments over the years. After a few brave souls offered up their queries, the show landed with a relentlessly funny take on John Howard – ending with a question mark hanging over our heads in terms of Australia’s political future.
‘Once Were Leaders’ was a refreshingly blunt and fearless commentary on the state of the nation and those that attempt to shepherd it from one election to the next. For young and old it’s a good reminder that often what we think is a new and untrodden direction is simply back to the future – but maybe just a little bit worse.
Deborah Hawke
When: Closed
Where: The Canberra Theatre Centre
Bookings: Closed
