Mooney gives PM well-earned roasting
COMEDY
An Evening With Malcolm Turnbull, Lawrence Mooney, Athenaeum, until April 22
Cameron Woodhead
★★★½
I wonder if Lawrence Mooney banked on the fact that, however lame and inexact his impersonation of Malcolm Bligh Turnbull might prove, it couldn’t possibly be as disappointing as the genuine article.
There have been political satirists with astonishing gifts for mimicry – Max Gillies could transform himself into Hawke and Keating and Howard, say. And there’ve been others, just as great, without it – the late lamented John Clarke was effectively an anti-impersonator, using his own dry persona to burnish the absurdities of contemporary politics.
Lawrence Mooney
Mooney’s Prime Minister lies somewhere between. His accent resembles the cookie-cutter posh accent from Fast Forward, though there are moments of intense recognition in the thought bubbles and speech patterns.
What eventually emerges is a savage portrait of a PM who has abandoned his principles in pursuit of power and been left hamstrung by that. It’s an entertaining roast at its best, though it loses tone, resorting to coarse invective and blue humour towards the end.