By Tara Ramsay
The Chaser always seems to be at war with somebody or something and this year it was a ‘War on the Fu*#king Election’. I’m not really all that up to date on politics and if I’m honest, I’m not as interested in them as I should be but, I am one for satirical comedy and whilst I was not too sure what to expect regarding the politics side I knew there would be plenty of satire and I was just hoping there would be enough to keep me interested!
The stage at the historical Brisbane Powerhouse was simply set, two lecterns and a huge screen in the middle. The show was opened on the screen and featured a series of vox pops taken on the street with the question being ‘Who is our current Prime Minister?’ I am pretty sure someone answered ‘Martin Sheen’ and the closest one of the members of the public came to actually getting it right was ‘Scott Morris.’ It was an extremely amusing video and was good to see I am not the only Aussie lacking in political knowledge.
Once the opening video was finished the hosts Charles Firth (The Chaser) and James Schloeffel (The Shovel) entered onto the stage to lead us through political parties, politicians backgrounds, electorates, policies and so much more, basically the good, the bad and the ugly, but mainly the bad and the ugly, with side splitting one liners and an abundance of innuendo’s.
Charles and James were often joined by Mark Humphries, who played multiple characters, including the very important political correspondent ‘Antony Brown’, keeping us up to date with all the breaking news from the election, which was mainly that no votes had been counted. His passion to tell us all no news was captivating. Throughout the night they were also joined by Victoria Zerbst (Freudian Nip) and Jenna Owen (SBS TV – The Feed) who played out some of my favourite sketches of the night, including when we got to meet the ‘Women Of The Liberal Party’, all two of them. They did try to convince us there were many women in the Liberal Party, not just them and entered on and off-stage changing wigs and characters which had the audience, including myself, in stitches. The chemistry of these two women on stage was captivating and they really played off each other well.
It really was a great re-creation of election night, but in their words ‘without the boring speeches’, and they were correct, there was nothing boring about The Chaser War on the F*#king Election and nobody was safe, not even the MAFS participants. Not only did I leave with a sore stomach from laughing extremely hard from all of the quick comedy, I felt I had learnt a lot about politics in Australia, like how no man working alongside Pauline Hanson is safe and that Peter Dutton has similarities to a potato. Armed with all of this new information I am sure to excel when it comes times to vote!
All opinions and thoughts expressed within reviews on Theatre Travels are those of the writer and not of the company at large.