Looking for Al...

First up for the night was the Wharf Review, this time called Looking for Albanese, obviously channeling Looking for Alibrandi.  Also obviously with suggestions of a tentative government, perhaps justified after 2019.  Again the four Wharfies, variously musicians and scriptwriters and singers and performers.  The themes are various characters in Australian and occasional International political matters.  The short sketches are (almost?) always pop or musical numbers rethemed and relyricised.  Oh, and a lengthy rhyme from Katy Gallagher as Finance Minister.  The whole started with four singing dummies then through all manner of pollies.  I noticed a preponderance of skits on Labor matters, no doubt following the election that trounced Morrison and his do-nothing spendthrifts.  I don't think Dutton, leader of the opposition, even appears (think Yepon/Yeppoon: I have no idea of spelling but I'm not from Queensland unlike Dutton).  Barnaby and Katter as apt.  Jackie Lambie appeared as a boot-skooter to introduce and sing at Tamworth.  The Greens got a spot as the alt.Wiggles.  Amusing if pretty obvious.  There was a fabulous scene of Gillard, Keating and Rudd at National Conference.  Similarly, Albanese was consistently believable.  The night started fairly tame, I thought, with limited laugh and applause, but finished with a take on West Side Story and Albo and mates, with dance/song numbers from the Rumble and Gee, Officer Krupke.  Most impressive and the biggest laugh and best received and apt as the last number of the night.  Not the belly laughs of previous Wharves that I've seen, but they are a hoot.

Jonathan Biggins, Mandy Bishop, Drew Forsythe and Phillip Scott appeared in the Wharf Review called Looking for Albanese at the Canberra Playhouse.

What’s left to laugh at

You could wonder if there’s anything left to laugh at in politics. The Wharf review was at it again but I found it disappointing. It’s probably not their fault. It’s the climate. After a disappointing six years for Labor and a trivial and negative campaign from Liberals, I am not comfortable. Nobody seems to be too relaxed, actually, except maybe some miners or carbon intensive industries. An angry public has been led with a tether and cries of crises. A social democrat party has been riddled with self-serving cliques. A conservative party mirrors unquestioning left radicals of mid last century. Look for radicals now on the right. Opinion trumps knowledge. A dull market certainty pervades everything in the midst of its own GFC failure: privatise profits, socialise losses; competition creates concentration. Meanwhile, we ignore climate change in favour of our short term and at our kids’ peril. So I didn’t find it too easy to laugh at the Wharf Review. It was clever; it was musical; it was Shakespearean, even. It was referential; it was lively and choreographed; it was well sung (even if ideas are harder to catch when sung); it was energetic. It even finished with a Q&A but we didn’t stay for that. I doubted actors had much to add to our predicament. I most enjoyed Carmen-Gillard in deep red: it’s a touching song and a memory of tragedy, both for how poorly she was treated, and for her own combination of communicative weakness and legislative success. There was the history of Abbott’s rise. I imagine he’s more capable than we allow for, but after dismantling carbon pricing, his place in history will surely rival George W Bush’s, both against the tide and the scientific consensus. Not that I pity him for it: he’s adult enough, and morally informed enough, to know better. That’s what responsibility is. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern instead was probably my favourite with its extended Hamlet story of lost political souls. Or the lengthy Wizard of Oz sequence where Dorothy is a disenchanted Labor voter who finds the Wizard is … Bob Hawke. Then the Alan Jones character. Enough. Maybe the era of political satire is passed. The real thing is acted for an angry public, so why pay to see more? I don’t really believe that, of course. Politics is, and remains, important as our mechanism for managing power and wealth in society (for there is such a thing as society, Maggie). But right now I’m finding it hard to laugh at.