Sydney Theatre Company’s production, THE WHARF REVUE, 2018, will kick off this year at Riverside Theatres from 13th to 15th September before touring across NSW, VIC and ACT.
Written and created by Jonathan Biggins and Drew Forsythe, THE WHARF REVUE 2018 will present another glorious year of political satire – keeping the nation’s political and cultural leaders on their metaphorical toes!
Biggins and Forsythe will be joined on stage by Rachael Beck (Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, TV’s It Takes Two and Hey Dad…!) and Douglas Hansell (TV’s Critical and Underbelly).
The Guide had the chance to chat with Jonathan about what we can expect.
SAG: Jonathan, what can we expect?
JONATHAN: A satirical revue! (laughing)
It’s really old style vaudeville, sketches and impressions and very musical. Lots of music, this year’s got more music than ever and it ranges from ‘When You Wish Upon a Star’ to songs from Guys and Dolls and Fifties songs. All genres. Country and Western and a bit of Rock and Roll.
All changed of course, re-written for our purposes. Scott Morrison and our version of Nightmare Song from Iolanthe! And of course political characters from here and around the world.
SAG: I was wondering about that. It’s such a bizarre political landscape, does that make it easier of more difficult for you.
JONATHAN: If I had a dollar for every time someone says … you’ve got so much material to choose from. And that’s true in one sense but the thing is that things move very slowly in politics. A bit like a duck in reverse, the storm in the teacup is on top and underneath, power moves at a glacial pace.
But there’s some good characters around. Obviously the Trumps of this world are a gift. And you still do have the Abbott and the whole debacle going on today. That Peter Dutton! Have you done any testing of the electorate? Less popular than rats under the house. You know it’s been a revolving door of leaders in Australian politics over the last 6-7 years. It’s hard not to look at it with some amusement.
SAG: And so do you take notes all year, or is it just a big push at the end.
JONATHAN: You know you’ve got to be careful because the show begins touring in a couple of weeks and goes right through to Christmas and you don’t want to have to keep re-writing all the time. So you find things that have got a sort of fairly long shelf life. You don’t want to have a panic if there’s leadership spills or an early election.
I remember once we were opened in Canberra the night after Malcolm rolled Tony the first time. So that was some very rapid rewriting. So you have to be careful that not everything needs to be written all the time because you just won’t be able to do it.
At the moment we are thinking about a whole big section and which way it’s going to go. But the months leading up to the first rehearsal is when we do the bulk of the writing, hoping that not too much is going to change … something major, like somebody dying or something!
SAG: So bringing it all down to a manageable level would be part of the challenge wouldn’t it?
JONATHAN: Yeah, because there’s only the four of us. Actually this year we have an extra, Andrew Worboys is joining us as Musical Director. This is a new direction for us. So he’ll be occasionally joining us on the floor as Kim Jong Un or John Bolton.
SAG: With The Wharf out of action you’ll finish the tour at the Roslyn Packer.
JONATHAN: It’s always been fun to play at the Wharf but we like the big spaces. We’ve added a bit more of a design element this year for the big theatres like Newcastle which is a 16,000 seat theatre and Canberra and the Roslyn Packer. We find it’s quite fun playing in a big theatre, we prefer it in a way.
SAG: And what are your personal favourite targets, do you like the homegrown or the overseas?
JONATHAN: The audience like the locals… the people that they know. And that’s the beauty of this sort of thing, it’s very immediate. You are talking to people who are of the same world, know all the references … it’s their daily lives.
And we find that people both sides of the political fence enjoy it because we try not to be malicious. In this day and age I think it’s very important that we can wedge the gap between different viewpoints with humour. Not to be too polarising … but you can be pointed.
SAG: So you would have a huge range of reading from left to right and back?
JONATHAN: Yes I know … you have just got to keep up with everything. And that’s one of the benefits of when the show finishes. I think ‘Ah good I don’t have to watch the news for a while!’ It gets depressing after a while, this job. (laughter).
That’s a while ahead yet for Jonathan and THE WHARF REVUE, 2018 which begins its tour at Riverside Theatres, 13th – 15th September.
Following Riverside, The Wharf Revue 2018 tour will head to the following locations: Joan Sutherland Performing Arts Centre from 20-22 Sept; Whitehorse Centre from 27-29 Sept; Glen St Theatre from 3-13 Oct; Illawarra Performing Arts Centre from 16-20 Oct; Canberra Theatre Centre from 23 Oct – 3 Nov; Wagga Wagga Civic Theatre from 6 Nov; Newcastle Civic Theatre from 9-10 Nov; and Sydney Theatre Company from 13 Nov to 15 Dec.