REVIEW: The 53rd Parliament.
Location: corner North Terrace and King
William street
FREE, limited seats.
Only occassional surprises are on offer
from this years show, which is perhaps inevitable given a format
which has over the centuries become a venerable institution. Two
teams of stand-up comics battle it out with improvized scripts – a
tag team Punch and Judy.
Playing an understated Punch this year,
Jay Weatherill fails to ignite much zing from a similarly laid-back
Judy in Steven Marshall.
“The Speaker” Michael Atkinson has
some success interjecting new material – the rebuking of one cast
member for not genuflecting at her entrance onstage being my favorite. But these are few and far between. Naming another cast
member for blasphemy – a reference perhaps to the recent Charlie
Hebdo massacre – seemed gratuitous.
I suspect the show could be sharpened
up with a little more focus from the “The Treasurer” – Tom
Koutsantonis, and the “Lord High Executioner” played by John Rau.
Given the suspension of belief on the part of the yesterdays
audience, who was named and thrown out onto the pavement by The
Speaker, these two key players need to cut back on the private jokes
amongst themselves if attendances are to improve.
