Ensemble Theatre, September 30
7/10
They’re joined at the hip, aren’t they? Politics without satire leads to pollies who takes themselves too seriously, and the phenomenon known as Kevin Rudd on the one hand, or a penchant for totalitarianism on the other. And satire without politics can simply equal a dearth of laughs. Try watching Jimmy Kimmel if he stops talking about Trump.
When The Wharf Revue team decided that a quarter of a century of bagging Keating, Howard, Hanson and the rest was enough, they left an empty chair in Sydney theatre with a vague imprint of their collective posteriors. Moulding themselves to fill that absence are writer/performers Andrew Hansen, Mark Humphries and Chris Taylor, plus writer Evan Williams and performer Christie Whelan Browne.
All have TV form in the satirical arena: Hansen and Taylor were members of The Chaser, Humphries did sketches for 7:30 and The Feed (with Williams writing for both), and Whelan Browne was on Shaun Micallef’s Mad as Hell. Add the Ensemble’s boss, Mark Kilmurry, as director, and Hansen’s musical skills, and there’s some serious talent and experience on tap.
But that doesn’t make it unfailingly funny. Consistency is the Holy Grail of all satire. At its best, The Year in Tatters works a treat, however, and may, like The Wharf Revue, become a cherished annual event. For that to happen, Whelan Browne apart, they need to raise their acting to match their undoubted skills as comedians.
They stormed off the start line with “Alboholics Anonymous”, an AA meeting for people who are addicted to Albo, but are constantly disappointed by him – which I believe takes in most of the left-leaning voters of Oz. Whelan Browne’s Alboholic was defecting all the way to One Nation. “If you ask me,” she told us, “the monoculture is still one culture too many. Why can’t we have no culture, like Queensland?”
The inanities of AUKUS – merely a Scott Morrison thought bubble, after all – were laid bare, and the Libs and Nats were depicted in the political wilderness, trying to work out how the hell they got there, and how to get out. Whelan Browne was hilarious as a White House press secretary, delighting in selling fiction as fact to the world, while castigating the fake news media.
The team also cunningly pulled off several non-political sketches, including trying to order at a restaurant via a QR code, an ambulance getting lost on the Waringah Freeway, and the announcement of the 2027 Adelaide Writers’ Week, which, by the time all the dubious types were scratched, was going to struggle to last an hour.
Taylor gave a press conference as a senior NSW cop, perfectly catching the oddities and tautologies of cop-speak, and even better was Humphries as a Catholic priest conducting a funeral for the death of Kyle Sandilands’ breakfast radio career. Genuine venom oozed into the lines here, doubling the hilarity.
Until October 24.