John Howard the Musical: ..................why?
Throw back a few ales whilst watching the Ashes, perhaps. Debating to what extent Bryce McGain has to offer the team, and how he stacks up to the O'Reillys, Benauds and Grimmets of his day. Maybe even wear matching green and gold tracksuits, just for good measure. A million other questions wouldn't suffice either.
After Friday night's performance. Just one seems important. "How do you justify, giving the arts community $270 million per year more than what the Keating government ever did, when the extent of honouring such a legacy in return, is a shambles of a play such as Howard: The Musical?" (yes, long winded question I know). Believe me, I'm struggling to justify $18.50.
Keating! worked because of how well it contrasted the dull existance of Australian politics with the individual charisma of Paul Keating (like him or not), and proceeded to flesh out the character of Keating, showing a more insecure and humane side of him through some wonderfully originally composed witty song and dance routines. Whilst politically, the show itself was neither sympathetic, or absolute in it's support for Paul Keating, it was certainly appreciative of what Paul Keating, the person, brought to Australian politics.
Howard, TM, by contrast, covers the same boring ground that the culturally elite have spurned at John Winston Howard for the past 35 years. He's short (yet peculiarly, played by someone who would stand well above the six foot mark), has big eyebrows and has a distinct voice. Whoa, snap.....
No attempt is made to justify or flesh out the Howard character, lest it stand in the way of tired cliches, shamelessly stolen aspects of Keating! The Musical, and inanely irrelevant pop culture references to Vanilla Ice and dog food commercials for the sake of cheap laughs.
The musical numbers, whilst incredibly well delivered, were merely reworded versions of contemporary music, most of which had already been done before (Tripod on Triple J a few years ago, for example, did a much better attempt at finding songs that rhymed with "Kevin"). The casting requirements seemed to come off as little more than the producers looking for year 10 drama students who'd work cheap. As such, it proved distracting, as erratically facial hairred and acne ridden young boys came off as barely old enough to have had the opportunity to have voted for or against the Howard Government, let alone been in primary school when he was first elected (exceptionally hypocritical coming from me, however, I'm not making any money from this). The identifying character traits of the characters played (an ensemble cast of Howard's family, Tony Abbott, Peter Costello, Alexander Downer, an unidentified member of the National Party, the Queen, and strangely enough, the highlight of the night, Le-Lin Chin), go as far as badly aped Monty Python impersonations, cheap wigs and glasses, as well as thinly veiled references to Keating.
I'd even go as far to say, that the long suffering culturally elite Brunswick St crowd deserved better than this, in terms of a closing point in this aspect of their history. Spend 11 years hating everything that the Howard Government does, and the best aspect of closure they can find is irrelevant Vanilla Ice jokes? If it weren't for the audience's blatant hypocracy, largely enjoying the unnecessarily cruel portrayal of Howard's parents, Mona and Lyall, yet gasping with indignation at the references to Bob Brown's sexual preference or Julia Gillard's barren uterus, I'd almost feel sorry for them. Instead I prefer to self-pity, knowing that these same creatures will continue to blame the Howard Government for everything for yet another 20 years.
Whilst I'm fully aware of the target audience, surely the arts community wouldn't have been above taking aim (pardon the pun) at the pro-gun lobbyists that Howard stood up to in 1996? I'm sure the Maritime Union wouldn't have been too hard to comically portray either, even for a 17 year old. And if we're going with cheap laughs, where was Kim Beazley in an over-exaggerated fat suit, keeping consistent with the Monty Python tributes, asking for "just one more after dinner mint?"
The public, no matter which side of the political fence you side on, deserved better, and the legacy of John Howard and his government deserved better. Not to mention that it perhaps is the end of the popularity of political musicals. My hopes of seeing Wilson Tuckey: The Musical aren't looking too good (perhaps the only one with the potential to actually get up on stage, if only for the scene that depicts how he got the "Ironbar" nickname would give it enough Federal Government grants to tour globally for Andrew Lloyd Webber-like periods of time)
........word to yo mother?
