THE WHARF REVUE - CELEBRATING 15 YEARS
THE WHARF REVUE - CELEBRATING 15 YEARS, Sydney Theatre Company at Wharf 1, 22 October-19 December 2015 (SOLD OUT). Photography by Brett Boardman: (above) Jonathan Biggins, Amanda Bishop, Phillip Scott and Drew Forsythe; right - the PM.
The Phillip Street Revue was an annual event on the Sydney theatre calendar for 17 years and for most of them Australia had one prime minister: Robert Menzies. The Wharf Revue – this year titled “Celebrating 15 years” – features in a semi-retrospective edition Bob Hawke, Paul Keating, John Howard, Julia Gillard, Tony Abbott and – in a shock overnight rewrite and addition in June – Malcolm Turnbull.
What this says about Australia, Australian politics and the craft of satire is open to a drink and maybe a long lunch at The Bar at the End of the Wharf, but it’s a remarkable statistic among the many that now shroud the Wharf Revue(s) in legend.
Another remarkable fact is that the creative principals of the show have remained constant throughout: Jonathan Biggins, Drew Forsythe and Phil Scott. This trio (with the annual addition of one other top-flight performer – these days Amanda Bishop is the fourth) has grown over the years from naughty, cheeky chappies to the country’s most accomplished practitioners of the dark arts.
Hence the Sydney season was sold out before the set and costumes had arrived back from the regional tour. So what do we get in this marriage of old and new, something borrowed and something blue?
Possibly bluest still is Howard’s Bunker and the last days of John and Janette (Scott and Bishop) and the faithful. And that’s mainly because the mere idea of the Howards and a sex life is as beyond ordinary imagining now as it was when we saw it in 2007.
Marvellous in another way is an uncompromising extended sketch in which Biggins appears as a Peter Pears-style tenor delivering Scott’s Benjamin Britten-style song cycle of paranoia, hatred and lunacy otherwise known as The Latham Diaries.
In the same vein of if you don’t get it, never mind, run and catch up, is Forsythe’s virtuosic delivery of Qantas’s Alan Joyce’s mini-biography in the style of James Joyce. As we saw earlier this year, Irish maestra Olwen Fouéré travels the world being lauded for this kind of thing.
The same levels of wit, imagination and deadly accuracy are to be seen in the rewriting of Under Milk Wood to Barry in Glamorgan and the townsfolks’ celebration of the elevation of the Gillard girl to queen of Australia. It is at once so right and so ridiculous.
The filmed segments (that allow the non-stop cast to change costumes and wigs and catch their breath) contain vivid gems of mimicry such as Bishop’s new victim: Lateline’s Emma Alberici – uncanny – and Annabel Crabb – hilarious. As well as bon-bons such as “Gina and Clive” – on the bow of the Titanic (Biggins and Forsythe warbling to the end) and Bob Carr – “still laboring the point” (Forsythe again).
Under-pinning the mostly brilliant and always eye-popping writing is the music with Phil Scott at the concert grand and in marvellous musical form. He and Bishop resurrect Rudd and Julia in a dusted off, still sparkling and restyled homage to Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom – which is so much better than the original it hurts.
Then there’s a jazz quartet – the Helen Clark Four – as the show’s nod to the land of our favourite ecksunt. It has a beatnik Biggins banging away on a bass guitar, Forsythe grooving gormlessly on his snare drum and Bishop delivering a unique Kiwi version of Take Five that contains the well known old Maori refrain “fuka fuka poo” – as well as a genuinely scintillating improv piano solo by Phil Scott.
The big set piece sketch of Les Liberales has the revolting peasants brainlessly at the barricades. It’s a gourmet melange of Franglais accents as thick and creamy as Brie and misunderstandings of what the revolution is all about (Bishop wants a creche and equal pay – silly silly girl). While superficially as daft as a wheel and simply funny, like so much of the Revue material, there is another level if you care to trip over it.
Uncompromising, in a different way, is the The Goons aka the last days of the ABC Charter. Chances are a good proportion of most audiences haven't a clue who the Goons were (pictured above) but this loving and faithfully ridiculous tribute is a good reason to find out.
For the rest, you have to hope the resurrected real life Paul Keating remains in the public eye as he is one of Jonathan Biggins’ most loved and freakishly exact impersonations. Weirdly he also has Clive Palmer to a T although aided by a fat suit whose proportions are no exaggeration.
The new PM makes a fleeting appearance in black leather jacket and suavely lifted chin; while the only thing that could possibly make me sorry George Brandis’s star is waning (please God) is Phil Scott’s evilly inspired portrayal of him in tutu and tights. Tony Abbott’s lizard tongue, nodding head and simian gait get a work out to groaning acclaim. On the other hand, Christopher Pyne as a rapper is as uninspiring as ... Christopher Pyne as a rapper. And then it’s almost over.
And it’s Australian politics and pubic life laid bare and – mostly – found wanting and worthy of hoots of laughter and derision. That it has been a mostly weird and occasionally wonderful time finally surfaces as the quartet lowers the temperature from cackles of laughter to subdued reflection.
Rather than a raucous finale, there’s the touchingly lovely four-part harmony rewrite (Scott) of the finale of Bernstein’s Candide – “Make our garden grow” - from a couple of years back. Like so much of the Revue, it’s an uncompromising choice for a knockabout entertainment and it will bring tears to your eyes and glimmering hope to your heart. Here’s to 2016 – and closing in on the Phillip Street record.
