Review: ADELAIDE CABARET FESTIVAL 2016: THE WHARF REVUE Lampoons Politics' Sacred Cows

Reviewed by Barry Lenny, Thursday 16th June, 2016

This year, The Wharf Revue took a retrospective look at its fifteen years and twenty-one productions of political and social satire. Written by Jonathan Biggins, Drew Forsythe, and Phillip Scott, and featuring the three of them with Amanda Bishop, no politician or public figure is safe from their barbed wits. Phillip Scott is also the musical director for the group and the lighting design is by Matthew Marshall.

The production is a combination of, mostly, live performances to either piano or recorded music, interspersed with occasional video segments, with the four performers creating dozens of caricatures of the rich and famous. With them, came waves of laughter and applause from an appreciative audience as we remembered people and events from the past decade and a half, with a string of Prime Ministers getting the Wharf treatment. John Howard, Bob Hawke, Paul Keating, Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard, and Tony Abbott were all held up for ridicule, and everybody loves to see their leaders subjected to a satirical analysis.

It is no holds barred as the four peel away the thin veneer of respectability and dignity to make fools of power mongers such as Clive Palmer, Gina Rhinehart, Julie Bishop, and Bronwyn Bishop alike. They are relentless in the application of great wit, intelligence, and acting skills, borrowing The Phantom of the Opera and Les Misèrables, and transforming them into distorted political histories, with just the name, Les Libèrables, getting a huge laugh as it appeared on the screen.

The wit is sharp and the production is polished, reflecting the long history of this group and the continual honing of their skills. As always, the audience were in fits of laughter and insisted on an encore before it was all over, amidst huge applause.

Here is one of the video sequences from the production, sending up Clive Palmer and Gina Rhinehart,

Another sequence, parodying Julia Gillard addressing the National Press Club, interrupted by Kevin Rudd.

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