Pennies From Kevin
PENNIES FROM KEVIN – THE WHARF REVUE Wharf 1, Sydney Theatre Company; November 4-December 6, (extension week: 9-12 December) Photography by Tracey Schramm.
Gold Diggers of 1935, and its Busby Berkley visions of massed lissome chorines, introduced to mid-Depression audiences the tune “Pennies From Heaven”. Its message was: every cloud has a silver lining if you stop grizzling and look for it. For the price of admission it made millions feel better for a couple of hours.
The 2009 – and tenth – Wharf Revue does much the same thing. It takes its title and massed, lissome four-person opening sequence from the song to remind us of the most recent global financial crash. But wait, there’s more! It’s the one we (in Australia) apparently didn’t have to have because we got our Pennies From Kevin instead. The reworking of the familiar tune is clever and funny in itself, yet the way it inverts history, while highlighting our merry national complacency – as the GFC recedes into short-term memory loss – is a brilliant conceit. Well, I think so: the authors might have had quite different intentions. Who knows.
Dreamed up, as ever, by Jonathan Biggins, Drew Forsythe and Phil Scott, under Scott’s scintillating musical direction and piano work, Pennies From Kevin is a show that had audience members muttering “best ever?” as they stumbled from Wharf 1 towards the bar. This latest version of the traditional end-of-year STC Revue has already been honed and polished through a short, sharp touring schedule that began in Lismore and took in Parramatta Riverside, Casula Powerhouse, Newcastle and Penrith. Arriving finally in its spiritual home, the structure, songs, moves and teamwork are slick, smooth and easy; and new recruit Helen Dallimore is seamlessly embedded with the lads.
The sketches and songs in the non-stop, no-interval, take-no-prisoners show range across the possibilities from quite savage satire to glorious silliness. In one instance these elements come together in an inspired scenario: a Colliery Brass Band mulls over the state of the coal industry and the finer points of the ETS while rehearsing for a play-off against a renewable energy company’s band. The way they earnestly murder Also sprach Zarathustra has to be seen to be tearfully enjoyed to the full.
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There is a mix of the familiar – Biggins channels Paul Keating and Gough Whitlam, lampoons the well-loved if now-deceased Democrat foot soldier; and a particularly lugubrious Bob Brown – and the experimental. Scott accomplishes a morph from Rudd to Howard and back again that is spooky and downright alarming; as well as grimly revealing. And Forsythe brings real pathos to Nick Xenophon’s rendering of “Ol’ Man Murray”. Most confronting of the group sketches is a play on real estate’s favourite mantra that turns “Possession Possession Possession” into a short and sober assessment of Jeruslem’s Wailing Wall. Bad taste is catered for by Dallimore as she explores life in Rome (La Dolce Big Eater) with our greediest and least lovesome ambassador Amanda Vanstone (with a violently toupeed Silvio Berlusconi as an added bonus). A Motown/Supremes medley for Michelle Obama and back up floozies is also cocks a snook at political correctness.
Other characters emerge and as quickly disappear in a fast-moving skate across thin ice: Kevin Potter, Swan Weasley and Hermione Gillard put in rather wizard appearances. Scott’s tongue-twisting virtuoso solo extolling the Coles-Woollies duopoly is exceptional. Unfortunately, picking favourites, or the suddenly recalled, means another pops up – and it could go on and on. The show’s creators have worked exceptional magic this time and the performances of the four are tremendous. It’s easy to see that Penny Wong’s all too brief appearance could feature more prominently in future; and you have to hope she continues on her relentless way, to give the Revuers even more material.
Pennies From Kevin spares nobody. It’s an equal opportunities giver of offence; and when it comes to poking fun at sacred kine (Vanstone and Bob Ellis, for instance), the unpalatable domestic and international truths of this past year are mercilessly dissected in the quest for a joke. They mostly succeed and the result is the most sustained laughter-fest this side of Copenhagen.
