Garfield Barwick

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星期三, 九月 6, 2023

While it lasted less than two full terms between December 1972 and November 1975, it has had an outsized cultural presence ever since.

Key Points:

While it lasted less than two full terms between December 1972 and November 1975, it has had an outsized cultural presence ever since.
Each year since, we have marked the anniversary with new stories, new angles, new details.
The story has all the ingredients of high drama – indeed, the story was told in a rather ponderous television mini-series in 1983.
So almost 50 years on, what to make of a comedic musical retelling of these tumultuous events?

Playing Gough, Justin Smith both sounds and looks like him – no mean feat.
The Dismissal is least effective when it is striving for sincerity: the early number Maintain your Rage left me concerned the show might be too earnest to be genuinely funny.
It is self-referential and extremely funny and sets a high bar for the rest of the show.
His Private School Boys is a bump-and-grind showstopper that recalls Alexander Downer’s Freaky from Casey Benetto’s 2005 musical Keating!

Margaret Whitlam (Brittanie Shipway) and Junie Morosi (Shannen Alyce Quan) are voices of reason and resolve.
Stacey Thomsett has much more fun with the role of Lady Kerr, who she depicts as Lady Macbeth in a Carla Zampatti suit.
But overall, The Dismissal is sharp, funny and astute.