Friday March 29, 2024
THE YOUNG TYCOONS
Review

THE YOUNG TYCOONS

By Polly Simons
May 23 2014

THE YOUNG TYCOONS, Darlinghurst Theatre Company at the Eternity Playhouse, 16 May to 15 June, 2014. Photography by Noni Carroll, above: Edmund Lembke-Hogan, right: Andrew Cutcliffe and Gabrielle Scawthorn.

Way before our bogan billionaires were brawling on the streets of Bondi, playwright CJ Johnson was pre-empting them with this savage comedy of media dynasties behaving badly.

Set in 2003 – and with the flip phones to show for it - it tells the tale of two media patriarchs, both preparing to hand over their empires to their chosen sons. One, Ted Vogler (Laurence Coy) is a rough-edged television magnate who implores his son “not to mess with the cricket”. The other is the smooth-suited Liam Warburton (John Turnbull), a print baron with a string of tabloid newspapers and an eye on the American markets. Ringing any bells yet?

In the successor’s chairs are the dull-witted Kim Vogler (Edmund Lembke-Hogan) and Liam’s son, Trevor (Andrew Cutcliffe): suave, Harvard educated and with a taste for group sex and cocaine.

Watching them intently is business journalist Dave Grolsch (James Lugton), who has grand plans to spin their drunken excesses and bad business decisions into newspaper gold.

It’s clear Johnson has taken a fair whack of inspiration from the Packer-Murdoch stoushes over the years – one review from the show’s original season in 2005 described it as being “torn from today’s headlines”, which suggests that, in content at least, very little has changed, even if the empires they preside over have been transformed beyond recognitionFor an opening night audience full of journalists and critics facing the threat of redundancy as a result of plummeting print circulations, Kim’s constant assurances that the Internet would never take over from newspapers caused more than a few grim chuckles.

THE YOUNG TYCOONS

On a smart set by designer Katja Handt, Edmund Lembke-Hogan brings plenty of Labrador-like charm as the too-eager-to-please Kim, while other stand-outs include Laurence Coy and John Turnbull, and Briallen Clarke as Kim’s patient – and much more intelligent - PA, Kylie.

 

Neither the plot nor the audience however need the trite descriptors such as “family business” and “girl talk” that are projected on to the set with each scene, and are intended to cheerily sum up what is to come. Undoubtedly, such annotations are intended to be wry and funny, but they smack of a playwright happier to tell the audience what is going on than let the clever script speak for itself. And it is clever: fast-paced and full of brilliant observations about how the other half live, although those easily offended might be best to cover their ears in parts. 

While it offers no deep insights into the undoubtedly fraught business of being a media mogul, The Young Tycoons is nonetheless sharp, scathing and always a lot of fun.

 

 

Subscribe

Get all the content of the week delivered straight to your inbox!

Register to Comment
Reset your Password
Registration Login
Registration