Wharf Revue – Looking for Albanese

It’s still called the Wharf Revue, but after two decades it’s moved inland – and sits happily in the York Theatre, Seymour Centre.  The familiar foursome has the same winning formula, spoiling us with over 90 minutes of political satire, which this year seems energised by a new PM on the block.

Indeed, Looking for Albanese begins with four open mouthed fairground clowns mocking the desperate hopes we invest in this new government.  And concludes with all the Labor gang clicking their fingers through the Inner West Side Story, each excitedly spruiking agendas to Albo – who hoses them down with “Let’s wait”.  We also see Albo in aged care, after six terms in government (“longer than Menzies!”), but avoiding Death arriving with his sickle.

This year there are far more hits than misses in the scripts and lyrics from writer/ performers, Jonathan Biggins and Drew Forsythe, who also direct, and Phillip Scott, also musical director. Regular Mandy Bishop is the fourth performer. She artful stomps through “Big Spender” as Allegra Spender; and as Jacqui Lambie boot scoots through the trucking song, “Convoy”; and all four do a ghoulish mockery of the ultra-conservative US Supreme Court singing and swaying to The Supremes.

Luckily there are still places for some vintage caricatures, like Biggins as Keating, Bishop as Gillard and Scott as Rudd, the Three ex-PMs awkwardly meeting outside a Labour Conference going on without them.  And Forsythe has nicely aged in synergy with his hysterically funny Pauline Hanson, and Bob Katter. 

The Wharf Revue’s great capacity to sometimes be just tender or thoughtful is exemplified in Forsythe’s moving song “Ghost Soldier” about the waste of Australian lives in Afghanistan.  And in a well-versed ballad from Bishop, Finance Minister Katy Gallagher reminds us that no one likes a woman in a razor gang; and even Biggins’ speech to Down Under as a laudable King Charles III has some good advice.

The show is as usual studded with short film clips, this time an hilarious revamp of ABC TV’s You Can’t Ask That, with a parade of horror world leaders.

Never mind the misses. It’s a hoot, a super talented foursome showing no sign of growing weary, and seemingly well-supported by new producer Jo Dyer  – she ran in the last election as an Independent in SA , but now has seen the light and turned to political satire.

Martin Portus

Photographer: Vishal Pandey.