The Wharf Revue: Celebrating 15 Years

With all these leadership changes, things in politics have moved so fast in recent years - and weeks - that perhaps this perennial troupe of satirists just couldn’t keep up. 

It’s a miracle they’ve maintained such a high speeding standard, producing all-new shows every year since 2000. 

This time the STC Wharf Revue team has broken the format and mixed new material with highlights from the last few years.  Old masterpieces reappear like the brilliant Gina Reinhardt and Clive Palmer Titanic-style filmed tribute to mining - and themselves; and Drew Forsythe and Jonathan Biggins also back disguised as Hawke and Keating in the Nursing Home. 

Phillip Scott again takes the lead in Howard’s Bunker, a flashback to his last days, and Scott also does a fine bland but mischievous Rudd to match Amanda Bishop’s famed Gillard.

Curiously, not every historic sketch is madly hilarious (one wonders why some greats weren’t included) but we always giggle in admiration at this team’s artistry.  Forsythe makes impressive Irish wit in Joycean language as he celebrates the Joyce boy who now runs Qantas; an Under Milkwood village scene in Wales has similar artistry, as villagers remember their own Julia Gillard. 

Bishop’s Helen Clark, with her slumbering, feral jazz band from New Zealand, is however both artful and hilarious.  As is a fond imitation of the Goons made into, at the end, some radio studio quest for a better politic.

But the good political pickings this year demand at least some new material.  Forsythe is glossy and leather-jacketed as the new PM, while Biggins is superb as the dark and lizard-like, lumbering Abbott.  And then there’s Bishop’s irascible Jacqui Lambie and (with a nod to the Revue’s audience demographics) a few too many sketches around ABC people.

The old blends with the new: things have moved so fast in politics that the old material seques seamlessly into our times.

Beyond the exceptional writing and satirical talent of this foursome, what also drives the sophistication of the Wharf Revues is Todd Decker’s video work and the rich musical direction of Phillip Scott on his grand piano.  With stylish aplomb, Scott remakes the sounds of Les Misérables, Phantom of the Opera and a tacky Eurovision hit from Greece into masterworks of satire.

Celebrating 15 years, there has never been a Wharf Revue not worth rushing to.

Martin Portus 

Images: ©Brett Boardman