The Pun

Keating! the Musical

By Richard Watts ⋅ April 23, 2007 ⋅  Email This Post ⋅  Print This Post ⋅ Post a comment

God bless you, Casey Bennetto, not only for setting me up with comp tickets for the latest incarnation of your show at very short notice after I ran into you at Trades Hall on Friday night, but also for writing the bloody thing in the first place.

Keating! is a musical celebration of the all-too-brief era when Paul Keating was Australia’s prime minister, when vision, not short-sightedness, was the political agenda of the day. Having won every award under the sun during its season at comedy festival two years ago, this marvellous show has since been redeveloped for Sydney’s Belvoir Street Theatre by director Neil Armfield, and triumphantly returns to Melbourne.

Although I didn’t see the original production (There goes my street cred!), I was lucky enough to see the dynamic, bare bones show on the opening night of last year’s Fringe, and fuck it was good. I occasionally struggled to juxtapose that version with the slicker, razzle-dazzle version I saw on Saturday.

I walked out after the show thinking the original version was better. I’ve since refined that perspective: not better, just different. It’s like comparing a film to the novel it’s based on. They’re different beasts.

From reggae to power ballads, this show has something for everyone’unless you happen to think John Howard is a morally upright leader with a well-developed social conscience, instead of a manipulative, socially divisive cunt who’s happy to exploit national archetypes and myths for his own political agenda.