The Wharf Revue – Celebrating 15 Years

A Brisbane appearance of Sydney Theatre Company’s revered The Wharf Revue is always eagerly anticipated. Previous visits to the Sunshine State have seen sold-out houses for Pennies from Kevin (2009) and Debt Defying Acts (2011), but it’s unlikely this current show will repeat the success of the previous two. It’s virtually a ‘best of’ program but, unlike a ‘best of’ album, several skits don’t bear repeated viewing.

Long-forgotten political feuds and faces are just that, long forgotten. Several ‘golden oldies’ still have currency; Clive Palmer and Gina Rinehart’s classic Titanic sketch skewering the mineral bust and Kevin Rudd’s kidnapping of Julia Gillard done a-la Phantom of the Opera, but The Latham Diaries, performed as a Martin Wesley-Smith song-cycle has long since passed its use-by-date.

Of the new material Jonathan Biggins and Amanda Bishop got big laughs with the Greece money woes done as a Eurovision Song Contest entry parodying the songs from Grease (“We’ve got bills they’re multiplying”), New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark, again Bishop with a broad Kiwi accent, scored as a jazz quartet send-up (think Dave Clark Five), with the fall of John Howard and rise of Malcolm Turnbull cleverly captured in the Les Miz salute Les Liberales.

Scott’s Howard impersonation and Bishop’s Gillard are two of the joys of the production. Hawke and Keating’s nursing home skit from Debt Defying Acts (2011) was given another workout, as was the mix-up of the Irish Joyce’s, James and Qantas chief Alan, in a Finnegan’s Wake parody from Red Wharf (2012).

Some audio visual targets also hit the mark; Biggins as Peter Costello, Forsythe as Geoffrey Robertson, and Bishop as Emma Alberici and Jacqui Lambie. The finale had the team recreating radio’s The Goon Show and searching for the ABC’s ‘lost’ charter.

It was revue as its finest - incisive, biting and gloriously satirical, reminding us nothing beats the genre for laughs when it’s on target.

Peter Pinne