Wharf Revue cast Drew Forsythe, Jonathan Biggins, Phillip Scott and Mandy Bishop are returning to the Canberra Theatre one last time. Photo: Brett Boardman.
After 25 years, the much-loved cultural institution The Wharf Revue is bringing its signature brand of playful satire to the stage for the last time. Their final show, The End of The Wharf As We Know It, will premier in Canberra in late October before going on to tour nationally.
“It’s an opportunity to spend more time with family,” said a spokesperson for the Revue.
“At the end of the day, this is about the need for renewal. We’ll serve one last term to max out the super and then try to pick up some kind of consultancy work or do a series of Survivor. Look, it’s too early to say, but it has been an honour to serve the Australian people.”
Canberra audiences will no doubt be familiar with this kind of humour from the Revue’s creative team. Jonathan Biggins, Drew Forsythe and Phillip Scott have been co-writing, co-directing and, in more recent years, co-producing the show since it first began on the wharf of Sydney Theatre Company.
“Canberra audiences are so on the ball,” Jonathan Biggins said from the studio where the creative team are developing The End of The Wharf As We Know It.
“They really understand all the politics and get all the references.”
Jonathan Biggins as Donald Trump in Can of Worms. Photo: Vishal Pandey.
Sharing space with the country’s politicians does indeed prime us for the many characters lovingly mocked by the Revue, including Keating, Howard, Downer, Costello, Gillard, Abbott, Lambie, Hanson, Bandt, Dutton and, of course, Albo.
“Pauline Hansen will be giving a fond farewell,” Biggins reveals.
“And the tech bros – Musk, Zuckerburg and Bezos – they are starting a colony on Mars. We will also have the Australian Democrats who are wondering if they should come back as Teals.”
“I am particularly looking forward to playing Angus Taylor Swift,” he laughs.
Having covered so many politicians and political moments across their history, Biggins and the other creatives have increasingly felt the challenge of coming up with fresh political, pop-cultural and general references each year.
“We have had a very good run but we are definitely ending before we start to repeat ourselves.
“Politics has become as binary as a computer, largely enabled by the 24-hour news cycle, the internet and the dissemination of misinformation. It all goes in circles, and the circles aren’t just going in circles, they are spiralling down as well. And that gets a bit boring and depressing because it’s our source material.”
Drew Forsythe as Pauline Hanson in Looking for Albanese. Photo: Vishal Pandey.
Perhaps, in the face of that despair, there is a real need for satire.
“I think the value of satire in the modern world is to remind people of the things that unify them rather than divide them,” Biggins agrees.
“A sense of humour is hopefully one of them.
“I think that has been an important function for us. Sometimes people will say you need to be hard, you have to be cruel, but I think the reason we have lasted 25 years is that everything we do is without malice.
“That has become an increasingly difficult line to walk when the subject matter is so depressing.”
There is still joy in the process for the creative team, however, who still have fun writing and being in the studio together.
“We will be sad to see it go, but we will be grateful for a change in inspiration.
“And we will certainly miss our annual trip to Canberra. We have opened there for some years now, and it has become the spiritual home of the Wharf Revue.
“We always have a good time in Canberra.”
The End of The Wharf As We Know It is at the Canberra Theatre Centre from 25 October to 2 November. Get your tickets from the Canberra Theatre.
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