The Hansard Monologues: A Matter of Public Importance

Going in you think you know what to expect, a lot of rhetoric, a lot of yawn-inducing ramblings and skewed political arguments. But what you actually get is quite different.

This is intriguing and compelling theatre. The Hansard Monologues is the perfect example of just how entertaining verbatim theatre can be when it has the appropriate subject matter at its core - which in this case is the life of the 43rd Parliament.

It is on a black box stage in the Seymour Centre's Everest Theatre that three actors stand at podiums and read from scripts that are a compilation of public statements made by recent key political players from 2010 to 2013. Writers Katie Pollock and Paul Daley have done a marvelous job sifting through thousands of pages of text to pluck out the highs and lows of recent political history. It is all here - the Cory Bernardi bestiality statement arguing against marriage equality, various statements on the carbon tax and boat people, and of course former Prime Minister Julia Gillard's misogyny speech.

Director Tim Jones uses simplicity as his guide and it is very effective. The cast (David Roberts, Camilla Ah Kin and Tony Llewellyn-Jones) is fantastic - they tread a very fine line of giving the flavour of the character without parody. This is interesting because while many of the lines in the script are well known, they take on a very different life free from the direct association of their original source. What this does is provide a different insight into the political agendas, messages and landscapes of this parliament and you realise that it was nowhere near the basket-case that it was made out to be at the time.

The Hansard Monologues - A Matter of Public Importance is exceptionally relevant and important theatre particularly given that Australia is facing a federal election. The only downside is the terribly short run in Sydney - hopefully it will be back for an encore, dare I say like some political players.

Whitney Fitzsimmons