Friday March 29, 2024
Beware of the Dogma
Review

Beware of the Dogma

November 19 2007

Beware of the Dogma - the Wharf Revue, Parramatta Riverside, November 13-17; www.riversideparramatta.com.au or +612 8839 3399Wharf 2, Sydney Theatre Company, November 19-December 22, www.sydneytheatre.com.au or +612 9250 1777

Now in their eighth year of Wharf Revues, the core creatives - Jonathan Biggins and Phil Scott (words and music) with long-time collaborators Drew Forsythe and Valerie Bader - not only keep their promises but also, this year, have made them even bigger and better.

And, unlike their victims (Howard J, Downer A, Rudd, K, Garrett P inter alia) they fulfil all pledges without causing one dollar's worth of inflation. As any lying hound politician would know - if not admit - this is a considerable achievement.

Sketch comedy and satire are tricky beasts when it comes to keeping up your standards, and over the years the Revue team has set them high and - mostly - achieved those heights even while acknowledging that falling back on cheap laughs and easy targets is always a great temptation.

Happily the Revue team has no hesitation in succumbing to that temptation and leap right in from the off. The inexpensive laughs are glorious and plentiful while the easy targets are skewered with vigour and without mercy. It makes for an evening of profligate laughter as well as some acid-dipped home truths.

There are almost no droopy bits in this show - despite the number of past-used-by pollies portrayed - and the 90 minutes are a series of loosely linked standouts. Jonathan Biggins doing a Keating lecture is uncanny both physically and stylistically and bang on target. Phil Scott is alarmingly good as the PM and the leader of the opposition: being able to portray a curmudgeon one minute and a petulant boy scout the next suggests an underlying mental condition that may need treatment, or merely that not only is he an exceptional musician but also, is a really good actor. (By the way, if you're reading this after November 24 it may not make a lot of sense.)

Beware of the Dogma

Drew Forsythe pulls off the race call of the year with the Randwick Papal stakes. He is in particularly fine form in Beware of the Dogma, getting his teeth right into the solid form of foreign minister Downer, for instance, and not letting go. It means he has little time for mugging and gurning and this is all to the good.

The weakness - and this is nitpicking in an evening of great enjoyment - is the historic one of the relative weakness - in writing and situation - of the female characters. Valerie Bader is one of the most accomplished actor-singer-comediennes in the business and she deserves more than she is given here. Watching her brings to mind one of the better moments for women in satire-cabaret when she, Gillian Hyde and Penny Biggins performed at the Tilbury as a group nightmare of Bronwyn Bishops. Hard to believe now that the former senator turned member for Mackellar was at that moment and in her own mind at any rate, a prime ministerial aspirant. On that occasion the bubble of hubris was hilariously inflated then burst by the golden bouffant-clad trio in a deeply moving version of I've Never Been to Me. Sigh. Those were the days.

Meanwhile, Beware of the Dogma is a mainly glorious night out for those who are sick to death of uTubing, boobing, dumb-downing, sick-making pollies - and, on the side, those fellow citizens who are so comfortable and relaxed we'll all be extinct before they wake up.

 

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