Image: www.artscentremelbourne.com.au
Max Gillies is probably the man you would most like to have as a dinner guest but you’d be afraid, if you licked your knife or slurped your soup, your idiosyncrasies would be painstakingly recorded by one of Australia’s greatest observers of human foibles.
To have had a young Gillies as a teacher in the early sixties must have been a memorable experience and it’s a blessing that, more than half a century later, this talented actor is still around to ensure that laughter is the best medicine.
Even more gratifying was the fact that the capacity audience in the ANZ Pavilion was not all silver bodgies and grey nomads but a large proportion of younger people, alert to the mumbling malapropisms and diverting theatrical gestures of politicians, past and present, delivered by a master impersonator.
Without his usual accoutrements of wigs, make-up and prosthetics, Gillies entered to the strains of a satirical song urging us to ‘take a step in time ….it’s never too late to repeat the same mistakes’. Then, presiding over the room with only a lectern and video screen as props, Gillies dedicated the evening to the memory of Malcolm Fraser whose demise that day did not, later in the show, preclude an excruciatingly funny demonstration of that man’s relationship with a despatch box in Parliament.
While some may have preferred more satirising of our current Prime Minister rather than earlier material relating to Lionel Murphy and Don Chipp’s brief sojourns, ‘Once were Leaders’ was designed to show a contrast between the colourful personalities of past Prime Ministers who once were true leaders and the rather drab, self-obsession of some who came later.
Who but Gillies could top Menzies’ memorable tribute to a young Queen Elizabeth ‘passing by’ and Gough Whitlam’s tour de force knighting Dame Edna Everage!
Whereas, according to Gillies, Tony Abbott ‘delivered his own satire’ with the absurdity of his ‘borderline weird Knights and Dames obsession with patriotism’ and his ‘captain’s picks’ while Rudd’s time was simply a ‘festival of me!’
Merely turning his back to the audience to rearrange that flexible face, Gillies would take the audience back in time into his characters with all their ‘wildly incorrect remarks.’ Hawke probably took a bit too much centre stage but his never-to- be forgotten character delivered a wealth of hilarious material for Gillies who said Hawke was the only Prime Minister who ‘left office with dignity intact!’
The Queen, as ‘biggest welfare recipient in the country,’ received a serve, as did Margaret Thatcher and even Julia Gillard’s glasses didn’t escape.
Classic video clips from some of Gillies’ best performances, like Marvellous Melbourne and The Gillies Report, were shown in the second half of the evening and the memory of
Queensland’s Russ Hinze and South Australia’s Amanda Vanstone will remain imprinted on the Gillies political landscape whenever a good belly laugh is needed.
Questions from the audience had also been requested but were disregarded as ‘comments’ without any lively exchange which was a little disappointing. Instead, the evening folded with a rather out-dated Sandy Stone John Howard send-up, even though it was a fitting tribute to that other master of satire, Barry Humphries.
Gillies was gracious in the credit he gave to the writers, cartoonists and make-up artists who had worked with him for over 30 years but nothing could replace the eyes, the nose and the mouth that delivered the words, along with the body language and gestures, keenly honed by hours of intense scrutiny.
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Once Were Leaders
Arts Centre Melbourne & Wander Productions
20 – 28 March 2015
